
Class . 
Book. 



GopyrightN 



jo 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT; 



MOEAL LEADERSHIP 
AND THE MINISTRY 



MOEAL LEADEKSHIP 
AND THE MINISTKY 



BY 

EDWARD E: KEEDY 

00 

Author of "The Naturalness of Christian Life* 



BOSTON 

HORACE WORTH COMPANY 

1912 



-W 40 , 1 







Yte* 



COPYRIGHT, 1912 
BY EDWARD E. KEEDY 



THE -PLIMPTON -PRESS -NORWOOD -MASS -U-S- A 



SCI.A309554 



PREFACE 

THE reality defined under the term 
Religion, with its central fact, God, 
and charged with a mighty moral 
dynamic, has released upon the world the 
great good of the life we know, and holds 
in its keeping immense and surpassing rich- 
ness. The point at which this moral capital 
is created to be added to the stock of feeling 
and conscience and will, is the privilege-place 
of the moral leader. 

How this moral capital may be created in 
his own life and be conviction and enthu- 
siasm, and how, through him, it may con- 
strain men — this very power of God — 
and become controlling animus and will in 
society, — how to lead, is the perplexed 
longing of every soul who, brooded by the 
[v] 



Preface 

Spirit of God, has come to feel the pull of 
the divine love. 

If to this perplexity of a soul as to how 
he may make his life most count, this little 
book should show the path to certainty; if 
meeting the ministry and the Church in 
their retreat, it should call to a valor which 
would entrench them in the reverence and 
hope of the world, as valor has more than 
once done, the confessedly great thing he 
who writes here has prayed and striven for, 
would be accomplished. 



[vi] 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. RELIGION AND LEADERSHIP ... 3 

II. THE SPIRIT OF LEADERSHIP ... 28 
HI. RELIGION — THE EQUIPMENT FOR 

LEADERSHIP 46 

IV. THE MINISTRY'S LOSS OF LEADERSHIP. 85 

V. THE POWER TO CONSTRAIN OR LEAD. 122 

VI. THE LEADER'S PROGRAM .... 160 

VII. THE TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP . 183 



[Vii] 



MORAL LEADERSHIP 
AND THE MINISTRY 



MOKAL LEADEBSHIP 
AND THE MINISTEY 

CHAPTER I 
RELIGION AND LEADERSHIP 

RELIGION is the making connection 
with higher powers, a participation 
in the life of God. Its fruit is a 
vastly superior life. Even paganism is an 
effort to bring to men the help of the gods. 
There are other and higher powers; there are 
the framework and the disposition and the 
energy and the ongoing and the law of the 
universe. The great fact is God. Fellow- 
ship with Him is life: i.e., peace, power, ser- 
vice, effectiveness, authority. The prophets 
of Israel illustrate it; Christ incarnates it. 
All religion is a quest for fuller life. It is 
a making connection with the soul of the 
[3] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

universe, a yielding to a great celestial 
gravitation, an entering into the life of God. 
It is the best way that has ever been made 
known, and the greatest support ever found, 
for the living of a life. Religion involves the 
fully personal, the extraordinary, the super- 
human. There is a mightier Will, there are 
higher thoughts and ways, and to go forth in 
the power of them is to share the life. Our 
fellowship is with the Father; our heritage is 
to partake of the divine nature. Religion 
is the most practical and the realest thing 
in the world. All good things and blessed 
boons are included in the abundant life it 
fosters. The religious man has equipment 
for leadership; he shares the superhuman, 
he lays hold of the divine, he incarnates God.* 

1 " Leadership, mastery of one's self and of the world, 
mark the character derived from the influence of Jesus Christ." 
— Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, p. 150. 

"How to take command of circumstances instead of 
being their slave; how to own one's wealth and not be owned 
by it; how to rule one's spirit as well as to take a city; how 
to be among the leaders and not among the led; how to 

[4] 



Religion and Leadership 

The first and great fact of the universe 
is God. The Gospel is the Gospel of, i.e., 
concerning, God. The Bible is eminently 
the story about God. It begins with His 
creation of a world — it ends with a vision 
of His triumph. It is the story of what God 
did, of what God said, of how God loved: 
how He rewarded and chastened and strove 
and led and over-ruled and triumphed. 
Its subject is God's will, God's providence, 
God's faithfulness. It tells of His dealings 
with Israel: how He made them a people; 
how He raised up for them leaders; how 
He gave them victory over their enemies; 
how He overthrew them for their idolatry; 
how He scattered them among the nations. 
Its great psalm sings that the Lord is a 

labor together with God instead of being a cog in some great 
machine; how to maintain peace of mind amid the disasters, 
illusions, and tragedies of experience — this is the cry for 
power which goes up from many a life, ensnared — as whose 
is not? — in the mechanism and materialism of the world." 

"To this cry for moral power . . . there comes . . . the 
answer of Jesus Christ." — Idem, p. 15£. 

[5] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

shepherd. Christ's Gospel is the fact of 
fatherhood. According to the insight of an 
ancient seer God is so much the one factor 
to be accounted of, that compared with man 
He shapes him as a potter shapes clay. In 
this sense, concerning the price of man's 
redemption, a hymn of the Gospel sings, 
"Jesus paid it all." 

This fact of God, consistently insisted 
upon in it, gives the Bible its surpassing 
and wonderful charm, and makes it an 
unrivaled book. It makes the grand dig- 
nity and the cheerful hopefulness of the 
Gospel. It gives life its awful solemnity, 
grounds its needed consolation and its glori- 
ous liberty; creates man's responsibility. 
The Gospel's saving grace is faith in God. 
Eternal life is the gift of God. Take God 
out of the Bible and it becomes as any 
other book; lose the fact of God and there 
is no gospel. The subject of the Bible is 
not man; the heart of the Gospel is not man. 

[6] 



Religion and Leadership 

The significant and hopeful fact of life is 
God. His imperial will and His perfect love 
undergird as law all the relations and needs 
of man. 

The Gospel is this — God is for us : man 
is partaker of the glory of God. Religion 
is an assessment of those things in the uni- 
verse that enrich and ennoble personality. 
Its essential principle is moral power. 

This Over-will is the greatest fact of the 
universe and the ground of every religion. 
Our God is our glory. The sun shines, the 
wind blows, the rain falls, the seasons come 
round, this and that come to pass — man 
does not have everything resting upon his 
shoulders. Indeed, what man does is very 
little compared with what is done for him. 
There is a power not his own. The wind 
carries the ship onward; the voyager but 
directs the course. Man is blocked and 
hindered; he is overturned and overturned. 
He cannot escape death, he cannot explain 
[7] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

life. He is in other hands. Time and tide 
wait for no man. A thousand necessities 
and inevitables hedge him about, and ac- 
cording to a standard and by a will both 
apart from man, does justice overtake him. 
Whatsoever a man soweth that verily shall 
he reap. Unquestionably, righteousness is 
enthroned in this universe. Love is in the 
nature of things as are the axioms of math- 
ematics. God's will is law. That love or 
will is the great force that moves the current, 
and he who will do that will, moves with the 
current and not against it. It is terrible to 
adversaries; it is attractive and constraining 
to friends. Joyfully to meet that will with 
one's own good endeavors, finding other 
strength for every trial and for mighty 
mastery, is to practise religion. The mighty 
will to make man superior begets his will 
to be superior, and the faith opens into 
the life. To obey and follow Christ is for the 
husbandman to enter into alliance with the 
[8] 



Religion and Leadership 

sun and the soil and the rain and the spirit 
of life in the seed : — working together with 
these, his harvest becomes increased a hun- 
dred-fold. The secret of renewal, stability, 
richness, and progress, is here. The breaking 
of bondage, the ascent to service, the power 
to lead and command — all come out of it. 
There is correspondingly as distinct an 
Over-good. People with a trustful assurance 
that things are working for good find that 
it is even so, and are quite lifted above 
that fear which disturbs the calm and 
paralyzes the energies of life. One can 
hardly deny that there have been those to 
whom the marvelous seems the fitting ex- 
pression of their inner power and greatness 
of soul. Theirs have been a commanding 
authority and an overflowing joy. They 
defied the prudent, the mighty, the wise, — 
living by a faith that, to other men, was 
raging foolishness, but won, because the 
unseen is eternal and the soul of the universe. 
[9] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

From their prisons and their crosses, out of 
their poverties and their shames, men have 
sung their overflowing mastery and peace. 
Sorrow could not long sit upon them, and 
their joy no man could take from them. 
In their way of life, they found the peace of 
God. It seems that everything they touched 
turned into good. The mills ground for 
them, the floods were lifted up for them, 
order and beauty were on every hand; and 
life was blessed. These have been the 
admiration and worship of the race. Be- 
cause of confidence they were courageous 
and mighty; because of their allies they 
went forth with power; because their law 
of life is established, they were kept calm. 
Theirs is the liberty of the glory of the 
children of God. Their personality is such 
as to turn things into blessing and to con- 
strain men to love. The qualities of superi- 
ority and leadership are inherent in them. 
Such are most charming and fascinating 
[10] 



Religion and Leadership 

people to live with — their love is so free 
and without thought of evil. 

There is no denying that life commonly 
is not good. Men are broken by sorrow and 
crushed by defeat. There are a thousand 
miseries and bondages; and fears. There 
is lack of tranquillity and repose, afflicting 
men with a kind of horror or despair of life. 
Men lack power to attempt, do not trust 
the sincerity of the world nor the goodness 
of life. They do not know their heritage as 
men, nor their partnership with the higher 
powers. The mood of timidity prevails. 
So the resources of life are barely touched. 
Men find themselves at cross purposes with 
the soul of things, and unable to meet the 
experiences of life with cheerfulness and hope. 
Toil turns out to be a curse — drudging and 
goaded by hunger. There is ignorance and 
pain and strife. All things seem against. 
Life is aimless, hopeless, loveless, joyless, 
unvictorious. Men go like slaves to the 

[in 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

treadmill or in bitter complaint; bear like 
beasts their load — that to them is life. If 
it is not miserable, it is petty; if it is not 
hopeless, it is weak; if it is content, it is 
because it is unaware of the best. 

The elevation and seriousness of the good 
life, in contrast, are evidenced by charac- 
teristic marks. They make clear the richer 
personality, the stronger will, a prevailing 
power, a conquering faith, the higher king- 
dom, the spirit of service, — the points of 
moral leadership. When the father of a 
friend of mine died some fifteen years ago, 
he left, to the surprise of his family, a sub- 
stantial indebtedness, and the estate was 
adjudged insolvent. For these years that 
son has been going without pleasures and 
comforts and the fulfilments of fond hopes, 
that he might pay the debt. He had hoped 
to inherit wealth. But when the heritage 
turned out to be debt, he who had been for 
years rejoicing that he was his father's son, 
[12] 



Religion and Leadership 

would not disallow the hard consequence 
of that relationship. 

That may be foolishness; but it is the 
conduct that harmonizes with the soul of 
things, makes life whole, turns things one's 
way, and reveals a mighty supporting 
power. Men may not do that, but they 
wish they might have this man's security 
and joy. 

Dr. Grenfell giving his life on the Labrador 
coast, meets his experiences with resource, 
defies hardship, can sleep in face of death, 
changes the character of a people, and 
gives his companions the feeling that by his 
very fearlessness and trust, he is following 
a stronger law than calculating prudence, 
and has the vast resource of God behind him. 
He has dared undertake a great enterprise, 
he has committed himself to the wholly 
right, he has become the servant and friend 
of men ; and whether or not men follow him, 
they love him and wish they might be capable 
[13] ' 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

of his heroism. I know a minister who, when 
offered high place in an industrial establish- 
ment and a salary of five thousand dollars 
a year, refused the offer, to continue in his 
greater ministry at fifteen hundred dollars! 
He cares for men's souls! When his wife 
died, he was kept tranquil; when he was 
put out of his pastorate, he lost no sleep; 
won by the glory of sacrifice and athirst for 
the cross, he is asking for one of the hardest 
fields in a new state. He walks over great 
difficulties as though they were not, — 
removing the mountains. One knowing him 
feels both his joy and his mastery. He is 
more than a match for the worst things that 
can happen to him. He commands the 
circumstances of life rather than is com- 
manded by them. Some wish that, for his 
own sake, he believed less in the good, that 
he hated easy and wrong ways less, that he 
loved not so much, that he was not so full of 
plans, that his plans were not so large, that 
[14] 



Religion and Leadership 

he was less untiring in his working. But 
one is constrained to love him, and to pray 
for his quality of life and for his harmony 
with God. The divine flows into him and 
his soul is victorious and superior. When a 
priest gives his life for lepers; when a mis- 
sionary regenerates an island of cannibals; 
when a man lets go his life that he may keep 
his honor; when one is crucified or exalted 
in his passion to save his community, or 
hungers for righteousness and men's souls 
as others are greedy for gold — God has 
appeared in a life overflowing and good, 
and men feel the divine. They may not 
follow but they admire; they may not heed 
but they praise. They know that the 
Christ is living among them. God has 
been manifest, a moral leader is shown 
at work, new life and new hope have 
been brought to men, the common con- 
science has been quickened, and religion 
has its vindication. 

[15] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

Religion is an active principle of life. 
The transformation of desire and will is 
wrought by it. It is not a philosophy; it 
is a regenerating power. It is not primarily 
an attitude within one; it is a reality or 
fact outside one. It is a great celestial 
gravitation to which we yield. "God w^ork- 
eth" — that is the great fact of the Gospel. 
And then we work — that is the answering 
faith in the other. To these two, all things 
are possible. Faith is the acting in view of 
this gravity to the finding how mighty is the 
push and pull of love. This regenerating 
power is equal to the task of making over 
the loves and hates and long-standing habits 
of idlers and gamblers and drunkards and 
thieves and prostitutes and murderers. It 
did this in the early day, and in many another 
day. Though our lack of faith makes this 
an uncommon hope and the present time in 
consequence poor in this manifestation of 
the power of God, it is yet a faithful saying, 
[16] 



Religion and Leadership 

and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus 
Christ came into the world to save sinners, 
even the chief. 

One who has himself practised religion 
could tell wonderful things of the goodness 
of life at which the world would marvel. 
For when a man fears not and frets not but 
pins to the right, mighty resources and 
allies surely do conspire to favor him. The 
very stars in their courses fight for him. 
Launching out into the deep and letting down 
his nets, he finds his purposes accomplished. 
One simply comes into fuller life, and has 
command of greater resources, when he 
works with God. Mighty and marvelous 
things are possible to faith, and of this there 
is no gainsaying. One lives so free and 
strong and achieving and joyous a life, 
that compared with it, the living of prudence 
or the gaining of things is not life at all. If 
it were only that one fears not death nor 
pain, nor what man can do, nor the storms 
[17] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

that beat against the house of one's life; if 
it were only that food and clothing are 
provided as surely as such needs of the birds 
are met, — that would be worth while. But 
this man removes mountains, overcomes 
difficulties and evils, becomes a man of 
resource, and is vibrant with life as one 
sprung from God. Like a tree planted by 
the streams of water, whose leaf is green and 
whose fruit is of twelve manners, he luxuri- 
ates. The hundred doors that remain shut 
to others unfold almost at a touch to him. 
Because he is right, all things are right, 
and every wind that blows fills his sails, and 
his voyage is full of peace. He not only is 
free, he has overcome the world. Trusting 
in God he finds the mighty Will or Love 
travailing in the soul of things, and going 
forth to meet it finds his faith justified and 
his soul invincible. 

Every undying book is the story of those 
who have lived a superior life; of those who 
[18] 



Religion and Leadership 

believed in God and committed themselves 
to Him. They trusted the Higher Power 
and went forth in the might of the Strong. 
They were, so, enabled to meet the experi- 
ences of life without flinching and with 
radiant hope. What God is they dared to 
undertake to become, and in their faith they 
found themselves supported by the whole 
order of things, and so came to the mastery of 
life. The resources of life were inexhaust- 
ible. That could not happen that could 
confound them. The Bible is the story of 
moral leaders; of those who walked with 
God; of those who exceeded in the goodness 
of their lives; of those who vastly enriched 
life. They discovered the Kingdom of the 
Spirit and by faith pressed into it. Out of 
all Jewish history these men of faith stand 
superior. 

Abraham going out he knew not where, 
and founding the nation of his vision; 
Jacob serving seven years for Rachel, 
[19] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

and the time seeming but a day for love; 
Moses renouncing a throne to deliver 
a people; Samson slaying his country's 
enemies and himself being slain; Jeremiah 
laboring forty years to reform a kingdom 
and receiving only scorning; Daniel dar- 
ing a king for conscience' sake; Jesus 
despising the cross that He might become 
our Saviour — with both its trust in God 
and its mastery, it is the characteristic 
type of the Bible. 

Christianity made its way in the early 
day simply by virtue of its wealth and 
manner of life. These Christians were win- 
some persons. They were better servants, 
better artisans, better citizens, better mas- 
ters, — more reliable in all the relations 
of life. The early Christian apologists con- 
fidently challenged a comparison of the 
Christian type of life with the best current. 
The contrast was notable even to those 
prejudiced against Christianity. By the ex- 
[20] 



Religion and Leadership 

cellence of His disciples' lives, Christ made 
His way. 1 

The Christian individual and Christian 
society are the best products history has to 
show. The apostles and missionaries and 
ministers and stewards of Christ with the 
divine consciousness, backed by the Gospel 
facts and truths and power, have been the 
most constructive social force. The con- 

1 " No other religion ever combined so many forms of 
attraction as Christianity, both from its intrinsic excel- 
lence and from its manifest adaptation to the special 
wants of the time. One great cause of its success was 
that it produced more heroic actions and formed more 
upright men than any other creed." — Lecky, History of 
European Morals, p. 394. 

"The Fathers were long able to challenge their adver- 
saries to produce a single instance in which any other crime 
than his faith was proved against a martyr, and they urged 
with a just and noble pride that whatever doubt there might 
be of the truth of the Christian doctrines, or of the divine 
origin of the Christian miracles, there was at least no doubt 
that Christianity had transformed the characters of multi- 
tudes, vivified the cold heart by a new enthusiasm, redeemed, 
regenerated and emancipated the most depraved of man- 
kind. Noble lives, crowned by heroic deaths, were the best 
arguments of the infant Church. Their enemies themselves 
not infrequently acknowledged it." — Idem, p. 414. 

[21] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

trolling fact in the evolution of society is 
religious. The law of progress is the subor- 
dination of the interests of the individual 
to the interests of society; the constant 
admission of the weak and unprivileged to 
the rivalry of life on the basis of equality of 
opportunity. This has given the practically 
universal political enfranchisement of the 
western world, 1 and is giving social and 
industrial privileges to the lowliest. The 
interests of the individual and the interests 
of society have tended to come into conflict, 
and the selfish order has steadily given way 
before the social. The immutable nature of 
the order of things, and religion, which is 
revelation of its moving force, have worked 
in the wills of men to make the western 
world what it is. 

The ideals that literature incarnates; the 
visions of a man's best moments; the hero- 
isms that redeem the wastes of history; the 

1 Kidd, Social Evolution. 

[22] 



Religion and Leadership 

institutions and the laws that are charter of 
the golden age of our hope; the soul's herit- 
age in the will and wisdom of God; the 
regeneration of evil lives — this is the sur- 
passing realm of religion. Every perfect 
glory of life is its privilege. Its type is none 
less than the Son of God. The conventional 
and mediocre goodness of the average 
Christian does not at all exhaust the resources 
of religion. Christ came to fill life full. 
It is a regnant and majestic power that the 
Christian allies himself with. The metaphor 
of a new and heavenly creature suggests 
the fact. For even the lowest, and worst, 
and oldest in shame, there is renewal, and 
the fulfilment of the most daring hopes. 

The Church, where religion comes defi- 
nitely to expression, though weighted with 
defects, is unquestionably the best social life 
and influence that is known. Its growth, its 
variety of life and of fruits, and its endur- 
ing — all reveal its essential glory of life. 
[23] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

There may be moral leadership outside of 
the Church and outside of avowed religion, 
but its real spring is those ideals and truths 
and facts and persons which make up the 
content of our faith. Religion has a superior 
and surpassing life for its end, and if for any 
reason the place of constituted religion be 
usurped by a rival, it is because it has failed 
of its right. The test of religion is the kind 
of life it fosters, and there is no place where 
life should be so glad and masterful and ser- 
viceable as where religion is most cherished. 
The Church has the equipment for superior 
life — moral leadership is its high privilege. 
More than this: moral leadership belongs to 
those whose ministry is distinctly religious, 
to those who serve the altar of God, to those 
who would bring others into God's life. The 
priest, if he would persuade men to God, or 
mediate God, must himself have a good 
transcending the common. He must make 
a real and practical connection with God. 
[24] 



Religion and Leadership 

But the superior life is a fact : the greatest 
fact known to us is God. It may fall out of 
common recognition and all living be a 
dreary common-place and men be without 
their own as some beggar who does not know 
his royal lineage, but religion is realer than 
the stars. It may be held as a fairy tale to 
please the imagination, but it is practical 
and attemptable, and lays challenge upon 
the will. The call in this day is loud to enter 
into it; frankly and freely to take the risk 
of that high fellowship, and to bring into 
bold relief the victorious life and the reality 
of God. The Church can save itself, and the 
ministry can save itself, only as a vast glory 
of life is exhibited; only by living under the 
might of a renewing and victorious Will. 
Without this the world but languishes; 
without it life is vain. With it life is re- 
deemed from the petty and from brutehood, 
from misery and fear, from even that aver- 
age and conventional goodness that is still 
[25] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

vain, to the dominion that makes us as gods, 
the glory of which estate so transcends as to 
be of quite another kind, and so exceeds 
imagining that they alone can know its glory 
who have entered into its Life. 

But before and behind that grace and 
power of God, which, getting into a man, 
becomes attractive and regal being, there is 
the divine Being who works mightily. The 
fact is before the faith which the fact creates. 
The fact of God remains even if there is no 
faith in Him. In the strength of Him His 
prophet goes forth like the Mighties of old, 
with a "Thus saith the Lord." The kingdom 
that he seeks is God's kingdom; the power he 
trusts is God's power; the glory he shares is 
God's glory; the judgment he pronounces 
is God's decree; the reward he promises is 
God's gift. Backed by God — the reality 
of whom he recovers to life — he may make 
kings tremble, bring to the despairing new 
heart and hope; and be esteemed as he 
[26] 



Religion and Leadership 

whose very feet are beautiful because he 
brings good tidings. 

If one proclaimed today this old Gospel 
concerning God, it would sound very strange 
to many ears which, hearing an exclusively 
emphasized immanence, know only guesses 
and words of feeble authority. But if one 
compassed the fact of God — this mighty 
brooding righteousness and love — he would 
know how tremendous is the cosmic drift 
and pull. If feeling it beneath him, he com- 
mitted himself to it, this celestial current — 
with his own hearty endeavor which it in- 
spired — would glorify his life with the 
glory that makes the constraining regality 
of God. 



[27] 



CHAPTER II 

THE SPIRIT OF LEADERSHIP 

THERE was heard a few years ago, in one 
of our eastern cities, an address from 
the Secretary of one of our laymen's 
Brotherhoods, in the interest of revivifying 
the Churches. The climax of the address was 
a bitter passage in which the speaker charged 
that ministers are cowards and — not to 
mention the lack of rugged moral living — 
fear to hold up a standard that would re- 
buke even the wicked lives of their people; 
contended they have great regard for the 
holding of their places which real enthusiasm 
for God would endanger, and declared that 
the office had become mere gilding upon 
achieving society; decorative but useless. 
There was truth enough in the charge to 
[28] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

more than sting — it was challenge that had 
to be answered. The reply came from a 
minister of rank, and with some feeling, but 
few could have been prepared for the words. 
"It is no easier for a minister to starve than 
it is for any other man," ran the apology, and 
no franker acknowledgment of the charge 
could be framed; no more sweeping denial 
of the minister's function could be made; no 
baser slander of the Christian disciple could 
be implied. 

But what is disavowed in this infidel de- 
fense is exactly what should be, for real 
religion is the spring of the most valorous 
life; it is adequate fact and reason and feel- 
ing for sustaining one in any kind of loss for 
righteousness. The minister is the very 
mediator of the Gospel. If he cannot dare 
for righteousness, which is his field, what 
does he more than others. Lacking this, the 
good of the Gospel is but empty phrase. If 
he is prudent and calculating, putting place 
[29] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

before the truth, and ease before righteous- 
ness, his religion is no better than the worldly 
wisdom before which he bows. He thus 
actually has no gospel and no power in, or 
respect of, society; for he has no saving from 
sin and its misery; no great comfort for sor- 
row, or in any abasing; no adequate impulse 
for daring; no superior incentive for serving; 
no surpassing and constraining righteousness. 
To do more than the rest — to stand when 
others fall; to have peace at the center of 
life, however disturbed the circumference, 
and when others fret; to suffer without com- 
plaining; to starve if need be for Christ's 
sake and gladly; to fear not death nor pov- 
erty nor what man can do, for the glory of 
righteousness — this is the aim, and ample 
for this is the power, of the Gospel. The 
Life expresses itself in manifold ways accord- 
ing to occasion, but the essence is such a 
bounding enthusiasm for God, that it over- 
mounts or removes the greatest obstacles. It 
[30] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

is a passion for righteousness that esteems 
the reproach of Christ greater riches than 
life. 

He alone can lead who cares enough for 
goodness to suffer for it. The condition is 
simply that single-mindedness which, daring 
to be a slave to love, is exalted master over 
all. A double-minded man, unstable in all 
his ways, receives nothing of the Lord. The 
most constraining and admirable thing is 
enduring a cross for righteousness. If we 
only dared to die for men, we could lead and 
save them. Such real faith is the Christly 
magnetism. All real love has in it the com- 
pulsion of the love of Christ. 

No one can open the record of the words 
and deeds of our Lord and not feel at once 
the charming vigor of its moral tone, nor 
fail to note the presence of a power nerving 
to undertake and to endure for righteousness. 
The Master is blind to nothing of the might 
of evil, and Himself felt its cruel hate, but 
[31] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

His spirit notwithstanding is victorious — 
the majesty of enduring love. 

The Gospel is a challenge and a stirring 
call to arms. Unflinching loyalty to the 
most perfect righteousness is its demand, in 
the balance with which life itself nor pain 
nor poverty nor shame, can count at all. 
It presents a life scornful of ease and praise 
and possessions, which things, according to 
its word, might only be enemies, of which 
one need rather beware. If one, to gain the 
world, lost his soul, it was a fool's venture, 
while he who gave up his life for Christ, was 
praised for wisdom and rewarded a thousand- 
fold. Christ's anger burned against evil 
men who for their comfort oppressed their 
brothers and by their exaltation of a worldly 
glory caused little children to stumble, but 
praised with stintless words one who had left 
houses and lands and wife and children for 
His sake and the Gospel's. He laid upon 
His disciples the conversion of the world by a 
[32] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

gospel that runs counter to natural desires 
and to a worldly wisdom firmly intrenched in 
strongholds of will. He warned them that 
for His sake they would be driven out of 
cities and be brought before kings. He used 
to say with startling emphasis that His dis- 
ciple would be hated of all men, and in pros- 
pects that chill all but raging enthusiasms 
pictured the offense of the Gospel. 

He pictured the consequent glory of Life 
with the same vigor of stroke, and dared to 
promise every peace and mastery. If one 
ventured wholly it was to gain all; and one 
might be so lifted up that he mock cross and 
flame. Trusting goodness wholly, the very 
framework, and time and tide, and the warp 
and woof of things would be his allies, and he 
be in league with the stones of the field, and 
the will and eternities of God. Not only 
would other men be taken captive by the 
manifestation in him of what is so deep in the 
universe, but it in turn would support him. 
[33] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

Jesus' living was wholly valorous, heroic. 
He himself suffered the loss of all things for 
the Kingdom of God's sake. He was poor 
and homeless, hated, betrayed, put to death: 
but he was the most tranquil and joyous 
of men, who despised this shame as a light 
affliction, and took reproach for God as great 
joy. "He that would save his life shall lose 
it," was before the word, action that cast 
calculating prudence to the winds. "He 
that will lose his life for My sake and the 
Gospel's, will save it," was before the word, 
the most daring fidelity. He drank the 
bitterest cup; He suffered the shamefullest 
death. The beasts of the field were better 
off than He. Both endurance and gain 
are masterful: the atmosphere of faith is 
majestic. 

The Kingdom of God may indeed become 
a passion, and one be as hungry for righteous- 
ness as other men are greedy for gold. Yokes 
become easy, burdens become light for love. 
[34] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

We suffer for love and yet thrive. We give 
ourselves upon the altar of our country. 
Men endure hardship and loneliness and 
want and incessant toil for riches. The note 
of the Gospel is not less imperial. The 
Master's word is "unto death." 

The apostles were of this heroic frame who 
counted all things but loss for Christ. "For 
God has set forth us the apostles last of all," 
runs the record, "as men doomed to death: 
we are made a spectacle unto the world, and 
to angels, and to men. We are fools for 
Christ's sake ... we are weak ... we have 
dishonor. Even unto this present hour, we 
both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and 
are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling- 
place; and we toil, working with our own 
hands: reviled . . . persecuted . . . defamed 
... we are made as the filth of the 
world, the offscouring of all things . . ." 
The Great of Israel, it heartened the early 
Church to remember, were men of the same 
[35] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

faith, who had trial of mockings and scourg- 
ings, of bonds and imprisonment: who were 
stoned and sawn asunder and slain with the 
sword: destitute, afflicted, evil entreated, 
wandering in deserts and mountains and 
caves of the earth. The heroic age of the 
Church is crowned with martyrdoms: men 
and women, for a joy set before them, endured 
pain and death as if they were paths to 
glory. For this great venture their faith 
nerved them. From the righteousness which 
is love, and was their goal, nothing could 
turn them. In the grand loyalty of their 
faith they counted all things but loss for 
Christ. They feared nothing but sin; they 
desired nothing but God: and in this single- 
ness of heart, all things conspired to favor 
them. 

It is clear Faith has no monopoly of endur- 
ance, and though it has surpassing reasons 
and motives, it may be pressed hard to hold 
first place, to fail in holding which would be 
[36] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

its undoing. That the minister should bring 
to his high calling less of the daring peculiar 
to it — necessary in every undertaking, but for 
which he has surpassing motives — is the 
danger, and it thus fail to appeal to the 
vigor and valor of manhood; lack of which 
single-mindedness — though a hundred creeds 
be held — would be fatal unbelief. 

Given the endurance of the soldier, so 
great and so common, the disciple of the 
Cross to be superior must be a man of nerve 
and iron. War has its own dangers and sacri- 
fices and hardness, but by far the greater 
history of the world is its story. Life itself is 
offered as the stake: privation and weariness 
count not, nor sore travail and anguish. Of 
this every conflict bears witness. When the 
great apostle required a figure to illustrate 
the character of the Christian, he gave ex- 
hortation to endure hardness as a good sol- 
dier. A certain militant spirit that scorns 
the hard is its essence. For their country in 
[37] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

time of war even common men do valiantly 
and with an enthusiasm that is passion. Men 
are not weak and calculating here; adequate 
motives and grounds are found to sustain 
them. But what if with all its truth and 
sanctions and enthronements of righteous- 
ness in God, less than the same spirit rule in 
the Church! What if the minister bring to 
his calling and to God less than the valor of 
the soldier! 

Love of home blossoms in steady sacrifice 
and endurance, sustained by its own quiet 
motives, and often as if bred in the very 
bone. All that a man has he will give for 
home, and while it endures, the valor and 
sacrifice of man will not be left without 
witness. For love men wear themselves out 
in labor, undertake the greatest tasks, take 
up the heaviest cross, count themselves 
nothing. Here, too, men quit themselves 
valiantly; fear nothing, give all. 

I think, as I write this, of one whose frame 
[38] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

is of this mold, and to whose undramatic 
valor I am constrained to bear witness. If 
it were required that he lay down his life he 
would do it calmly and gladly, but his is a 
heavier cross. He has worked steadily for 
years and unto weariness of the flesh, but 
unskilled and improvident, with a family of 
five besides, he has fallen upon evil times. 
His wife lingers with sickness; death long 
delays. Used to privation and without the 
gift of friends, he himself cares for the house 
and the children and the sick — day and 
night and unto exhaustion — with no com- 
plaint but rather with the joy of that great 
love which knows no other mind. Without 
means and with a tottering credit, there was 
pressed upon him a neighbor's love. "We 
are indeed happy," this cross-bearer ex- 
plained, and turned the pity away. 

It is not uncommon, rather otherwise, and 
that is why it is mentioned here. Not for 
any applause does he do it — he is under the 
[39] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

eyes of no multitude — nor from any definite 
belief in God. He is but the commonest of 
men, but love has made him a slave. And he 
is glad of the bond. Everything depends 
upon where one's center is, and upon what is 
on the other side, whether a load weighs 
heavy on the scale-beam. Set a disciple who 
is on fire for Christ to laying up posses- 
sions, and it will be an intolerable burden. 

If one is measuring valor in terms of scorn 
of death, the gladiator of Rome could hardly 
escape naming; and the whole standard of 
human endurance is raised when we name 
him. In the arena the martyrs, too, fought 
the beasts for love of Christ in that ruggedest 
fidelity of the faith. But for their own rea- 
sons and motives, these other men courted 
death — the victims of some merciless enthu- 
siasm. So long as they did it, Christ was 
dethroned, had the apostles come short of the 
same daring. As we know, the apostles did 
not fail, but for purer reasons and motives, 
[40] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

defied the worst men could do. And so it 
was the apostles led, and that Christ was 
enthroned Lord over that world. 

Commerce is a hearty passion in our day, 
and men of nerve arise to possess the king- 
dom. Not to speak of the ceaseless toil of 
its daily round, and the being spent, time 
and strength, and life even unto men's 
souls, nor of what ample toll is gladly given, 
consider such enterprise as that of which 
Irving tells the story, in Astoria. Could men 
dare more or endure more or make greater 
sacrifices than these men in their dauntless 
attempt to establish the fur trade in this 
wilderness? These explorers and adven- 
turers count all things but loss for their 
prize of glory, and, disdainful of ease and 
the sure, cast themselves upon danger and 
death. 

Having far better reasons and grounds, the 
disciple of Christ legitimately leads these 
others in endurance and valor. They endure 
[41] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

for but an earthly crown : he for a heavenly. 
If they do so well without the vision of 
Christ and of the love of the Father and of the 
eternal years, with the incentive of these, any 
kind of stalwart man must scorn mere ease 
and favor and riches, in the pursuit of the 
righteousness of faith. Spurning the shel- 
tered haven, he challenges the dangers and 
treasures of the deep, upon which faith bids 
him launch out and cast his nets. Fed by 
such visions and reasons, even poverty and 
persecution are not hardships too great. If 
the gladiator can find grounds for the enthu- 
siasm that dares, St. Paul knowing whom he 
has believed, may not be counted mad if 
he lives among scourgings and prisons and 
poverties and many abasings for the Gospel's 
sake. If the zeal of Islam is what it is, what 
may not our zeal for our Master be ! 

There is a service to be rendered, a cross to 
be carried, some sacrifice to be made, a King- 
dom to make come, some one to die for the 
[42] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

people or for the truth, — why should not I 
be the one to do it. I know better than any 
other the grounds and reasons for service; 
the sustaining motives and warrants for 
sacrifice. These others can have no Master 
like unto mine, whose glory of service lays 
upon me constraining charm. They know 
not as I how vain and weak are things, nor 
have felt as I the glory of love. Others may 
push and crowd for the first places — their 
master bids them so — I whose Lord is lowly 
will be last and least. Others may pine and 
suffer for things — I am ahungry and will 
suffer for righteousness. Others may live 
for the praise of men — I will learn to bear 
reproach. Others may fear death — I will 
learn to think of it lightly. They will be 
concerned with themselves — I will love 
others and give myself for them, for the sake 
of Christ, who loved me and gave Himself 
for me. They will labor for the meat that 
perisheth — long hours and all aweary, and 
[43] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

it be in vain. I, too, will strive unto weari- 
ness, because my labor is not in vain in the 
Lord. No real approval of conscience, nor 
favor of God, nor sustaining grace, lights their 
place. All these are mine. I but name God 
to my troubles, and sorrow and sighing flee 
away. Greater joy than makes them count 
things loss for their fading crown, makes me 
esteem the reproach of Christ, because my 
crown of life fadeth not away. 

If commerce lures the trader into the wilds 
of forest and haunts of savage, the King- 
dom of Christ may lure the Jesuit upon 
the same trail and gladden his heart in the 
midst of the same hardships. The same en- 
thusiasm, with its valor of daring, that is con- 
spicuous in camp and arena and home and 
office and wilderness and mine and shop, must 
not be wanting in the Church. To lead here 
demands the same energy, the same sacrifice, 
the same daring, the same whole-heartedness : 
and more, just as the motives are more sur- 
[44] 



The Spirit of Leadership 

passing, that in comparison the others are 
but the reasons of fools. Lacking this, the 
ministry must so suffer in the rivalry of the 
world's interests, that the Kingdom of God 
and the Church will be no longer considered 
as worthful; and for lack of men to give Him 
witness, the holy God of Love, whose fellow- 
ship is the priceless boon of life, will be con- 
ceived as vanity; and for want of husbandry, 
the gardens of God become again deserts 
and His cities places of waste. 



[45] 



CHAPTER III 

RELIGION — THE EQUIPMENT FOR 
LEADERSHIP 

THE basis of religion is certain facts, 
realer and surer than the stars. For 
the most part these have reference to 
the energy and resource and disposition of 
the universe. There is another will. And 
it is good. It is God's good pleasure to give 
us His Kingdom. God is love. The earth 
itself groans and travails to be complete. 

The facts of religion are expressed in the 
creeds and the ideals and the people, which 
represent the work of the mind and the 
heart and the experience, or life, of the race 
upon the revelation of God of Himself, and 
ground the motives and inspirations for 
superior living. Every good thing and every 
[46] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

fruitful motive are taken up and unified in 
religion. 

Now the minister, of all believers, has 
committed himself to these facts, — he has 
accepted the creed. His hold upon these 
facts, his persuasion of them, his training 
in them, would seem to warrant the expecta- 
tion that the fruits of religion should come 
to the best perfection among the priests of 
it. There may be other leaders, but the 
minister has the official equipment for leader- 
ship. In him is the recognized and valid 
foundation laid. Religion objectively con- 
sidered is inspiration to life. It is an assess- 
ment of the ideals and grounds and motives 
for most worthful and victorious living. 

The only logic of a creed is a life to corre- 
spond to it. All belief is for the sake of 
action. Every truth involves a duty. The 
great facts of religion are foundation for a 
life of transcendent good. Upon this con- 
nection between belief and life, the minister 
[47] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

justifies much of his effort to win men, and 
it may be demanded that he make produc- 
tive in himself the program and the motives 
he presses upon others. He who gives his 
life to persuade men to a tremendous good 
by the use of certain facts, must himself not 
only have taught those facts but must also 
have felt the power of them. It is because 
he believes that he calls others to believe. 

The practical logic of the facts of our 
creed carries us into the most thorough-going 
enthusiasm or heroism for the good. Every 
creed is for the sake of life and stands or 
falls with the life it makes. The facts of 
religion themselves are so great, the visions 
and ideals of life so persuasive, the experi- 
ences of life so justifying, that inevitable 
enthusiasm, out of which life comes, is 
begotten. 

The practical issue of monotheism is the 
unity of life. Followed back to its signifi- 
cance, it declares that the discords of life are 
[48] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

but seeming; one will and heart unite all. 
All men are children of one Father. In 
polytheism the rivalries and the divisions of 
men are carried up into the purposes and the 
conduct of the gods. But in fact, in the 
heart of things, the good alone is enthroned. 
And it is for all. The graciousness of God 
declares that this total soul of things is for 
us, and is a gracious energy of will that goes 
forth to inspire and to meet our own good 
endeavors — that runs like a favoring tide 
beneath our keel. To rest in it quietly, to 
work with it earnestly — the heart of all true 
religion — is its only logic. If death breaks 
not the continuity of life, but all we have 
made our own is carried forward to new in- 
vestment under other skies; if it is a physical 
change like the slipping of a garment, and 
not a moral change like the being brave or 
faithless; if it is but a sleep, waking from 
which we know the same joy, and love still 
the same good, and have the same soul, then 
[49] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

we dare bid it defiance and lay down our 
lives for the truth that is ever the only way 
to life. If God is judge and overturns and 
overturns and overturns a thing until he 
comes whose right it is, and He gives it him, 
then to do righteousness is the coming of 
summer with brooding good as to garden 
and field. If Christ is the incarnation of 
God and the sum of the universe, then like- 
ness to Him who served is harmony with our 
environment, a moving with the tide of 
things and not against it, the condition of all 
things working for us, the law and the reward 
of life, and so a resistless compulsion. Then 
the fullest culture of our being is pledged by 
the universe, and optimism is the very spirit 
of the Faith. Then, too, missions and all 
Christian service are but the expression of 
the inner groaning or yearning of God, and 
we might dare strip ourselves bare in an 
enthusiasm to love and to give. Under this 
fact, fear might become faith, and hike- 
[50] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

warmness in the service of Christ a burning 
zeal to bless others. 

Thus in the faith we hold to certain facts 
revealed, which, vindicated and proved, be- 
come to us beliefs. The Gospel is thus not 
from man; it is from God. The basal facts 
of religion are as gravity, or the procession of 
the seasons, or the nature of gold. These 
realities are revealed to man, not made by 
him. Other foundation can no man lay than 
is laid. St. Paul did not owe his Gospel to 
man; he owed it to God. We do not make 
the facts of religion; they are as far beyond 
us as our making the sun. We accept these 
facts, declare them, live by them. They are 
the rock upon which we are secure. They 
are the celestial gravitation which draws by 
mighty love. Our service is supported in 
reason; it is vindicated to our understanding; 
it has its confirmation in human judgment. 
The facts speak to the mind as objects to the 
eye. The creed of Christ, answering to 
[51] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

reality and basing conviction, is equipment 
for heroic and masterful life. In the grandeur 
of its facts and in the power of the might 
of them, it grounds a fearless enthusiasm. 
The only logic of belief is glorious action. 

Only by holding the great doctrines of the 
Church as something apart from fact, and 
from life — mere traditions, without inner 
meaning; the theory of the books and not 
the facts of the universe nor the experience 
of the soul — can one miss the constrain- 
ing power of them. What if God is love, 
as He is declared to be? Who then can 
prudently save his life, or be content while 
the unprivileged are without a habitation 
in the Spirit? 

It is not thus that we are made by this 
faith to strain but harder at the oars, — as 
if the teaching were but a fiction to produce 
a greater endeavor; it is actual fact that the 
mighty winds fill our sails, and tides bearing 
us up set toward our haven. God works — 
[52] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

that is the fact and the power: and we are 
inspired to work — that is its appropriation. 

The facts of religion — facts touching the 
disposition and feeling and energy of the 
universe — are as absolute and authoritative 
as gravitation, as real as the tides. Love is 
actual law. It is not of man's making; it 
is of God's essence. God abides, being 
faithful to it. He cannot deny Himself. 
The minister simply speaks for God. He 
does not create the facts; he has had them 
revealed to him. The physicist does not 
make gravity, nor the astronomer the stars. 
"Thus saith the Lord," is accordingly the 
minister's seal and authority. Here is his 
equipment. He is strong in the Lord. He 
goes in the power of His might. His is the 
armor of God. All the majesty and ampli- 
tude of God are his. 

In this is the grandeur of the minister's 
calling. He is the moral leader by virtue of 
the constitution of things as moral; because 
[53] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

his motives and constrainings are as deep as 
absolute and essential being. What is truth 
to the mind is objectively real in the world. 
One feels to contend that the full logic of 
our belief be accepted in simplicity; that 
men trust the convictions and conclusions of 
their minds without any reserve and without 
any fear. To do this is for the mariner to 
obey the compass. Not to do it is to refuse 
all guidance as unreliable, and to be at the 
mercy of voices that we have to own are 
false, and to admit to ourselves we do not 
believe. Our belief is our pilot. To disobey 
what we approve is to play the fool with life, 
unpardonably to sin, to put out the very 
light given for safety. Whether or not the 
minister himself accepts the logic of these 
beliefs, he relies for results upon the impres- 
sion these facts make upon others, if his 
preaching is to be other than sounding brass; 
and if he himself does not yield unto enthu- 
siasm before the logic he urges against others, 
[54] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

we all know very well how feebly he believes 
the truth, how dimly he sees the glory; and, 
too, how little he can persuade men; how 
impossible it is that he lead. 

That superior life which means leadership 
is the logical compulsion of our creed, and for 
this by education and training and consecra- 
tion, the minister has the official and ac- 
credited equipment. All should know that 
only the wisdom of fools indicates that there 
can be any real or permanent endeavor or 
life apart from a deeply laid foundation in the 
grounds therefor; it is folly for a minister to 
come to his task without an appreciation of 
the great facts and truths of the faith. 
Expect no hearty nor wise endeavor that is 
not the issue of the mind's work upon things : 
things are not established nor grounded nor 
done until they are laid in reason. The will 
can give only timid and fickle loyalty against 
an uncertain mind. 

Now the minister is the one who has the 
[55] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

equipment for leadership in the worthful 
things we call spiritual or real. He has ex- 
amined their foundations, he has measured 
the depth and the height, he has tested their 
validity and strength. He knows how abso- 
lute they are; that they are of God. Other 
men may only recite the creed; he has tested 
it, believes it, lives it, declares it, defends it. 
Other men miss the significance for life of the 
articles of the creed, like there is one God; he 
feels the practical significance or logic of it; 
compasses it as cosmic fact. Other men get 
no present inspiration or power from the 
endless life; he feels the mighty tug of the 
reality at his will. Other men may not know 
till he convinces them why missions must lay 
a tremendous challenge upon men's will. He 
has searched out the logic of it, and — if his 
words be more than the saying what he 
should say and not what he knows and feels 
— is himself constrained before the truth 
he has to own. They may be lukewarm; he 
[56] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

cannot be who has been face to face with the 
facts of his creed. The minister is first con- 
verted by his knowledge of ultimate facts. 
No man's faith or enthusiasm has a right to 
equal his. He may convert no other by his 
sermon, but he is himself converted by it. 
If he himself is not first converted by it, no 
other is likely to be. 

The minister's intellectual training does 
warrant the expectation that the fruits of 
religion should come to perfection among the 
priests of it. And this among all religions 
is the valid assumption — moral leadership 
belongs to the minister of religion. 

Let us cease to expect the common, the 
lukewarm, the halting, the prudential, of the 
minister of Christ. At every step there is 
foundation in reality for the superior, the 
heroic, the authoritative, the enthusiastic. 
Let us send the cowardly and the ignorant 
back to the springs of inspiration and power. 
They are here, we know the paths to them. 
[57] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

Let us insist that in all honesty the men set 
to lead make the venture that connects the 
creed they recite with the sublimity of life 
they praise; that they bring the will into 
captivity to the thought; that they follow in 
all honesty the logic of their creed. For con- 
sider: have they not simply to choose be- 
tween admitting that the premises they 
defend are felt to be false, and — granted 
that they are valid — confessing to insin- 
cerity of life. The alternative is intellectual 
or moral dishonesty. 

If the logic of the Christian faith is not 
conclusive, and does not carry with it action 
and the glory of life, these men must find the 
grounds upon which they can secure them- 
selves with enthusiasm. They might be 
forgiven if they did not believe anything. 
But then they must not confess, but rather 
oppose, the Church's teaching. If a man 
believes it and declares it, he must also make 
his life a vindication of it. 
[58] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

Religion comes equipped for superior life 
also because it embodies certain ideals, and 
stirs certain emotions and feelings and ad- 
mirations and wishes. Now an ideal is the 
emotional equivalent of a reality. Christian 
ideals, too, are grounded as deep as God. 
These ideals are: the beauty and order of the 
natural world; the ineffable grandeur of the 
Kingdom of God; the equipment of things 
for, and the movement of things toward, a 
glorious end; the glory and attraction of 
Christ; the praise of, and the wish for, grand 
achievement; the oneness between desire 
and deed — the unity of the heart's world; 
the brotherhood and native equality of all 
men; the condemnation of light and easy 
ways; the undying soul growing in power 
and glory in the way everlasting; the army 
of the redeemed and victorious coming out 
of every land and time. 

These ideals are the flowers that all love 
and praise; the music that is sweetness and 
[59] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

harmony to all ears; visions that all catch 
from the sheen of divine garments and all 
know come from God. They strike in upon 
the soul in self -witness; they are the axioms 
and corollaries of our being; they answer to 
our nature as the landscape answers to the 
eye; they have the force of primal author- 
ity; and they are as much a part of the 
universe as the stars. 

What one ought to do, it is safe and very 
life to do. The very ongoing does not turn 
traitor to the ought it brooded into being. 
Rather all things work together for good to 
them that are faithful to the ought. Even 
God abides by being faithful: He cannot 
deny Himself. One can if he ought. Who 
made the ought made also the can. 

These ideals are incorporated in religion, if 
they be not, as I believe, inspired by religion, 
and it is to be expected that these ideals come 
to their fullest realization in the life of those 
whose equipment is distinctly religious. Be 
[60] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

that as it may, we all know that religion is 
no other than those springs that satisfy, 
and inspire the worthiest life, and if avowed 
religion cannot vindicate itself in this regard, 
it has simply forfeited the reality that gives 
it right to be, and is sure to have its place 
taken by those things to which men do give 
their allegiance because they strengthen and 
greaten life. 

But the real dynamic of Christianity is 
Christ. He is the incarnation of all truth 
and all ideals — a person. It is the love of 
Christ that constrains us. The moral gran- 
deur or sublimity of the Son of God begets 
in us loyalty. The inspiration of Christianity 
is not alone in truth but in what more stirs 
in us a passion. "For his sake" has, through 
the times of greatest enthusiasm and in the 
best of men, been the motive. Christ 
changes us into His own likeness, creates 
within us His mind. He terribly rebukes 
of lukewarmness and sin; appealingly invites 
[61] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

and charms. He is the object of our trust: 
inevitable, because He is trustworthy; the 
ground of our optimism and hope. Faith is 
the inevitable impulse after contact with 
Jesus. St. John affirms, "He that sinneth 
hath not known Him." If anyone sinned 
it was proof he had not known Christ. It 
is in His name, by His divine glory and 
virtue, that one is saved. His life has 
begotten the abundant life, in the glori- 
ous and great ones, in the quiet and joy- 
ous ones, in the daring and victorious ones, 
who in turn have enriched and ennobled 
other lives. 

Christianity is fellowship with Christ. It 
is not first law to be kept; it is a companion- 
ship, friendship. It has in it the warmth of 
devotion. It is for Him we count all things 
but loss. Sin is disloyalty to Him. Virtue 
is loyalty to Him. Prayer is communion 
with Him. Joy is His approval. In cow- 
ardice we deny Him; for money we betray 
[62] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

Him; in envy we crucify Him. Our luke- 
warmness is forgetfulness of Him. No one 
is condemned because he is bad, but because 
he does not believe in Christ. No one is 
justified because he is good, but because he 
believes in Christ. The heart of Christianity 
is Christ, and religion is a personal relation- 
ship to Him. It is an experience of the soul. 
For His sake, whose love takes us captive, we 
do mightily. It is His love that stirs our 
love, and we are launched on the mighty 
enthusiasm that is the tide of religion. 

Who is friend of Christ has constraining 
power. Poise of mind and soul, warmth of 
love, spirit to dare and undertake, and charm 
of person — are all his. These beget in turn 
in others, interest, devotion, willingness to 
be commanded, and a sense of God which is 
authority. Now the ministry as friends of 
Christ are wrapped round with those ideals, 
and the Spirit, which issue from Him; they 
know Him, and here, in what begets devotion 
[63] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

or passion, have also the equipment for 
leadership. They dwell in His fellowship; 
they have felt the power of His constraining; 
they have entered into His mind; they have 
answered His call to service. It may be 
that for years they have walked with Him, 
and the divine face has shed upon them its 
radiance. This is great privilege and con- 
straining. Other men live in associations 
not the best; these men are ever in the face 
of vision. 

Here too we need a frank acceptance of 
the approvals and admirations of the heart 
as the very program of life, and fearlessly 
and enthusiastically to commit ourselves to 
Christ. There is solid ground beneath our 
feet at every step. Our ideals simply cannot 
be gainsaid; they represent the self-evident 
and undeniable; the compelling. The moral 
beauty and glory of Christ lay upon us in- 
escapable charm. The incarnation of the 
good tremendously constrains us. Daily we 
[64] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

are brought into judgment by Him, and pro- 
nounce our own doom: we are miserable 
cowards and cravens — we see and approve 
the better though we follow the worse. But 
looking upon Christ, the noblest and best 
are stirred within us — we, too, go to the 
cross. 

We know by every feeling and to a cer- 
tainty that no one can pin to truth and fail; 
that if we do good the heavens will not fall; 
that our condemnations of folly are in spite 
of all effort to excuse; that we loathe our- 
selves for our divided life; that Christ is our 
true self. Here, too, the machinery for heroic 
living is perfect and within the keeping of 
established religion. This is not to deny 
that it may become outworn, that it has 
many times stood idle, that few understood 
it, that it has not yielded a commensurate or 
living product. But it is in our keeping, and 
the day has come when again it must be 
chosen whether the output shall be worthier, 
[65] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

or whether current religion shall be dis- 
credited by other and more vital ideals or 
faiths. To save religion and make it a power, 
the ministry must lead. And the ministry 
can lead only by fearlessly and joyously 
accepting its own logic and ideals, and living 
a masterful life. To believe in God is to be 
devoted to the God we believe in — is to 
commit ourselves to His will and His mind. 
Religion is partnership wi|h God in the work 
and glory of life. 

The equipment of the minister for leader- 
ship by virtue of his immersion in the con- 
templation of the facts of the creed and the 
ideals and the heroes of the faith, and by 
personal fellowship with Christ, is wholly 
adequate. It is the official equipment of 
religion. Attention — do the psychologists 
ever tire telling us? — commands the will. 
" What one thinks today he will do tomorrow/ ' 
is the law. Positive conviction and full 
persuasion are not born out of strange and 
[66] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

uncertain thoughts. Can it be otherwise 
than that a busy, flitting life be without 
mighty convictions and strong religious 
passions. Once men prepared for great 
careers by retirement into deserts: they 
came forth from their thinking and fasting 
and watching and praying and communing 
burning with faith. Moses and St. Paul, the 
great religious leaders, are examples. Medi- 
tation is a human necessity, not an oriental 
fashion. Men do not attend to the problems 
of life and destiny, do not think, do not con- 
clude, do not have fellowship with Christ, and 
so are without strength of mastering convic- 
tion. Here, on the positive side, is the 
explanation of enthusiasms such as patriotism 
and religious feeling. The continued atten- 
tion of men is arrested and held. Keep any 
cause intently and constantly before the 
attention of men, and they are subdued to the 
environment. This is true of even bad 
causes, as history proves. 
[67] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

Here then with the minister, by every 
legitimate expectation, should be found re- 
ligious certainty, enthusiasm, warmth. His 
vocation is the concentration of attention 
upon grand and majestic life. He dwells by 
the very springs of power. While other men 
feel the touch of the worldly things they 
work with, this man breathes the air of 
another world. To yield to the pressure of 
a blind community that he bestow his time 
upon a round of trifling labors, is the undoing 
of the minister. The habit of prayer, in the 
earnestness that enforces a fast, and con- 
tinues through long times, and comes to a 
personal consciousness of Christ, has discon- 
tinued, and penalty is paid in weakness and 
uncertainty of conviction. The decline in 
our day of the great moral convictions marks 
religion as well as literature, politics, com- 
merce, and art. There is no vision and the 
people perish. 

Yet faith, that commitment of ourselves 
[68] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

to Christ and to the living our ideals, is 
always an adventure. Men are mighty, not 
according to their knowing and feeling but 
according to their will. Will spans the gulf 
between our creed and our life. There is 
always an element of venture, of trust, in 
following Christ. Divine service is a great 
speculation. We go forth weeping, bearing 
precious seed, to come back with joy bring- 
ing the sheaves with us. Determination 
and decision count for quite as much as 
knowledge and feeling. This explains why 
people may know the creeds and be without 
passion for Christ; may have a beautiful 
philosophy, and be torn by fears; and why, 
on the other hand, simple-minded people 
may be enthusiasts for righteousness and be 
beyond fret. The courage of one's convic- 
tions or admirations is the primal equipment. 
The first real step toward God is the will to 
proceed. The hindrance is often a moral, not 
an intellectual, defect. Even a very little 
[69] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

knowledge, a sense of right or an admiration, 
is enough to begin with. 

A strenuous act of will is necessary to 
carry knowledge and feeling over into actual 
life. For it is difficult to keep a thing so 
good as religion from ending in itself; which 
would be as if the stream which should turn 
the wheels of a mighty activity should lose 
itself in the broad meadows of delight. One 
is reminded in this connection of the scathing 
satire of Jesus upon the priest and Levite, 
servers at the temple altar, who could with- 
out help pass a wounded and dying man by 
the highway; and upon the Pharisees whose 
hypocrisy he lashed with righteous vehe- 
mence. 

The divorce of truth and life, desire and 
deed, is practical unbelief, with many illus- 
trations of the failure to recognize their 
essential belonging together. The fact of 
the inability of one's philosophy to command 
the life, and in consequence belief exist on 
[70] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

two levels, one of mind and one of conduct, 
is notorious unto jest. It is reported, I am 
uncertain whether or not of Charles Lamb, 
that he was once asked if he believed in 
ghosts. "Of course," he replied, "I do not 
believe in ghosts; but I am afraid of them." 
One may easily come into an attitude toward 
religious truth and feeling by which these 
become merely pleasureable and not useful, 
and it be of such an one as of the Russian 
Count of which Mr. John Stoddard used to 
tell. His bed was to him an object of pride 
and a satisfaction to contemplate. "But" 
— he was wont to explain in showing it — 
"I do not sleep in it; I sleep under it." Re- 
ligious truth and feeling give certain pleasure, 
but for all our having them, we may force 
them to no real comfort or service, and we 
be as poor as unbelievers. Only the most 
earnest and persistent effort of will can meet 
and turn this tendency of practical unbelief. 
To be satisfied with the intellectual and emo- 
[711 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

tional apprehension of religion, and to com- 
pel no obedience of the will, is to be still 
without Christ. 

The temptation is subtile and especially 
is the minister subject. Preaching is aim- 
less and futile for this pre-supposition; and 
life is weak. The glorious truths and facts 
and feelings yield no living product. Con- 
version is of the will. There is no vital and 
saving faith that is not loyalty. 

The ultimate ground for religious certainty 
is thus the experience of the soul. For 
though the story of God's nearness to others 
be precious, and the creeds of Christendom 
imposing witness, they can never take the 
place of that personal knowing Christ which 
is the ground of every certainty and the very 
soul of religion. "I know whom I have 
believed and am persuaded," are words of 
rapturous certainty of St. Paul, but oh, I 
dare use them, not so much to repeat his 
story as to tell my own; the same grace may 
[72] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

be magnified in me of a God who still lives 
and loves nor has ceased to work. Ours is 
not a whit behind St. Paul's grand privilege. 
As the towering saints came to certainty in 
their day, so, too, may we come to it in ours. 
This is the very grandeur and freshness 
and power of religion : it exists in no book, 
which but contains the story, and is not the 
thing — it is created afresh in every believer. 
It is not a history past; it is an experience 
present. Its very existence depends upon 
its first-handedness; it is uncertain and feeble 
only when it becomes an echo. The believer 
may try to rest on another's witness — con- 
ventional explanations, vain traditions, stand- 
ardized ordos and feelings and experiences; 
and I bear witness that current and strong 
is the temptation to base religion here, 
instead of my going into the Holy of Holies 
and meeting God there myself. The first 
is easy, but oh, it is futile: the second is a 
travail of soul, but its issue is certainty. 
[73] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

The very denial of this privilege of the 
soul is common, for one may come to think 
that the deposit of grace has once for all 
been made, or vary that unbelief with its 
equal — that great privilege is to be here- 
after — and in either case lose the Gospel 
which is Christ's Good News, "The King- 
dom of Heaven is at hand." It is not a 
past to be lamented; it is not a future to be 
awaited; it is here with all its abounding 
certainty and passion. 

Every sterile time has been an ignoring of 
this high privilege; every season of fresh life 
and power a return to it, as when the barren- 
ness of winter has given place to summer 
with its throbbing life and its glowing hopes. 
One is reminded in this connection of the 
scathing satire of Jesus upon the religion of 
his day — traditions of a faith once living; 
tombs of something only remembered, but 
now dead. He found in Israel no first-hand 
relationship to God; no first-hand knowledge 
[74] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

of Him. He dared to declare that He found 
God within himself, met Him there, and 
knew His character and will. He made the 
knowledge of God of even date and claimed 
the privilege for every soul. That is the 
charm and power of Jesus. 

In the early Church every believer was in 
himself a new possessor and witness of grace. 
For no books had been canonized; the fresh 
and living spirit of the soul's experiences had 
not been extracted and bottled in creeds. 
Religion had existence only in the immediate 
and first-hand relationship of the soul to 
God. That is the charm and power of this 
martyr piety. 

When the Church after fifteen hundred 
years was well-nigh smothered under its 
accumulated traditions, rites, conventions, 
creeds, and the Church was so far dead that 
even the profligacy of the clergy was no 
scandal, the native longing for a first-hand 
access to Christ became passion to a few, 
[75] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

and the Reformation broke upon Europe 
like sunrise after the torpor and thraldom 
of night. The passion of monasticism and 
its steadfast endurance of faith as among 
the Jesuits, sprang out of an immediate and 
mystical certitude, and the very glow of the 
apostles is once more upon the Friends of 
God. The great vitality of the Puritan and 
Wesleyan movements had its being in this 
emphasis, and the power of such preaching 
as Spurgeon's. It is the secret of the really 
effective ministry of all those Churches that 
excite our wonder. Some first-hand knowl- 
edge feeds the devotion and passion of 
Father Damien and Mary Reed and Henry 
Drummond and Dr. Grenfell, and makes the 
wonder of grace of all those whose lives 
bring to us both condemnation and hope. 

Religion lends itself to proof and is vin- 
dicated in life. The goodness of God is not 
a speculative dogma; it is the experience of 
the Christian. Fearlessly to do right is to 
[76] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

find great allies in the pervading will. To 
go forward against obstacle in confidence is 
to find the hindrance removed, as the water 
of Jordan parted when the feet of the ad- 
vancing priests touched it. That things are 
working together for good may by trial be 
proved with full certainty, to the great free- 
ing of the spirit and the undergirding of the 
will. One who has tasted of the good things 
of life may fully know both the way thereto 
and the glory of them. One may know 
whom he has believed and be entirely 
persuaded. 

Every trust in the sincerity of the world 
vindicates itself. This is the great eman- 
cipating fact of experience. For several 
years I have made a study of my own fears 
and worries, in whose bondage I was missing 
the joy of life. It is a delight to confess 
that most of the direful things I feared did 
not come to pass; if I had not feared them 
life would have been strong. And what 
[77] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

came were much softened, and I have had 
to admit they enclosed a good will. And 
still others by resolution were overcome. I 
am forced to the persuasion that a good 
order is around me and to know something 
of the goodness of God. Bravely and fear- 
lessly to go forward as if difficulties did not 
beset, is to find that they quickly dissolve; 
to attack closed doors is to find that for the 
most part they swing open almost at a touch, 
as if one has the right to go in. To trust 
goodness is to find it strong. To be loyal 
to Christ is to find Him Lord of life. 

The proof even of immortality is given in 
experience in a present wealth of life. "Shall 
I live again?" — He knows to a full cer- 
tainty who is fully alive now. It is incon- 
ceivable to him, so much alive, that he should 
cease to be. Authority is given to him who 
has weightiness of soul, glory of life. The 
Goodness of God ceases to be a mere con- 
jecture and hope; to one making the test 
[78] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

it becomes a positive and a working cer- 
tainty. 1 

Not without the best of grounds has our 
religion come into being. It has the firmest 
foundation, it has convincing witness, it has 
the choicest fruit. Verily the things of it 
are the things that establish God. These 
ideals and their sufficient motives; this 
Friend who cares, and stirring our love; 
these facts of life and their good reasons 
vindicated in men's experience, make up its 
content. No calamity could compare with 
the discrediting of what represents the good 
gains of all the years; no service could com- 
pare with the giving new life and power to 
the formal and official machinery of religion. 
We may be thankful for all other leadership, 
that knows not the Lord's name nor makes 
His sign, and may comfort our hearts that 

1 The reader is referred for a fuller statement of religious 
experience as source of working certitude, to the author's 
volume, "The Naturalness of Christian Life," New York, 
1902. 

[79] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

His spirit stirs beneath and inspires all 
goodness, but that must ever be meager and 
occasional compared with that glory of life 
which is the certain and natural fruit of the 
Church, for the production of which all the 
great motives of life have been exhibited, all 
the great facts of life vindicated, all the 
great heroisms sanctified, all the noble lives 
lived. The inspiration of all real worthful- 
ness is God in Jesus Christ His Son, and faith 
in Him is ever the sufficient constraining to 
the souls of men. If one is true, it is because 
somehow a gleam has been caught from Him; 
if one leads men it is because somehow the 
glory of His life has had compelling charm. 
There may be choice fruits along the highway 
— chance richness and wealth without ap- 
parent right — but it is not in vain that the 
gardener knows his craft, and our expecta- 
tion is of his husbandry. The Church has 
official equipment for leadership — a creed 
and a faith and an experience with a Friend. 
[80] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

This equipment may at times seem to men 
to fail of adequate production and not to 
be justified. All departure of leadership 
from the Church is a serious raising of that 
question. Men are feeling that anew in our 
day as they have felt it in other days: cer- 
tain hide-bound humors may, like conven- 
tions, take away the fresh life and power 
which prove religion's right to be taken 
seriously. The call in our day — no one of 
discernment can mistake — is insistent to 
the making a very genuine connection be- 
tween the equipment of the Church and a 
superior life in the Church. The alternative 
is a discrediting of religion so thorough that 
no minister can maintain the respect of men 
for intellectual or moral honesty. He will 
be discredited as refuse of weaklings: and 
this is the cause of his already waning influ- 
ence and authority. This is the stake at 
present. Failing in this the Church will still 
be the retreat of weak souls whose lives have 
[81] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

lost all sap and vigor, but it will not com- 
mand the interest nor the allegiance of men 
of power and will, of heroism and abandon, 
who will invest their yearnings in industry, 
in politics, in the home, in the university, 
and from their own motives and grounds. 
As once, the Church will again be divorced 
from the main interests of life, and become 
a retreat, off the traveled way, without con- 
nection with reality, and without appeal to 
the heart that longs for a salvation laid in a 
mastery of life. And that is the least rem- 
nant of its glory. 

Much as at first, the Church again today 
has its fortune to make in a new world. 
Somewhat disestablished, it must re-intrench 
itself in the affection and reverence and 
hope of mankind. But as in the case of the 
Bible, which has in itself the inherent worth 
by which it is certain to re-canonize itself, 
the Church has inherent wealth and equip- 
ment to re-enthrone itself as sovereign over 
[82] 



Religion — the Equipment for Leadership 

the destinies of men. What it did origi- 
nally against tremendous obstacles, it can do 
in this day. No fact has ceased to be; no 
glory of Christ has departed; no capacity 
of man for loyalty and enthusiasm has been 
rendered void. God is a living God. Who 
speaks for Him and goes forth in His name 
has pledge of authority and power. In a 
man conformed to His will, God is tremen- 
dously constraining. > 

If the Church does not command motives 
sufficient to sustain a life transcending the 
common, and enthusiasm in that life, it must 
find them. The alternative is an obsolete 
or weak deity. Our God will be looked out 
of countenance by more virile and accom- 
plishing sorts, who do touch men in the 
glory of life. He will be driven from his 
throne by the heroes of humanity. This 
means that religion must issue in glorious 
life. It means that religion must ever renew 
itself by incorporating the heroisms, the 
[83] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

abandons, the motives that issue in majesty 
of life. It means that Christ must ever 
be made central. By fresh and constant in- 
carnation, the artificial, the impossible and 
the second-hand, must be supplanted, and 
humanity and reality kept in the divine 
things. 



[84] 



CHAPTER IV 
THE MINISTRY'S LOSS OF LEADERSHIP 

IF the Church has not lost supremacy and 
authority, it scarcely can be said to 
have a place commensurate with its 
equipment. The longing of men to know the 
reality and the tremendous goodness of 
partnership with a stronger Will, the long- 
ing for peace and for mastery, is not met: 
the Church is a disappointment to many 
aching souls. Nor does it lay upon men 
dissatisfaction with their emptiness by ex- 
hibiting a superior good. The gulf between 
the Church and the world may be so narrow 
as to be undiscoverable. So the Church 
commands an attention so slight as to be 
an ignoring, and while there is the form of 
respect, there is not that ruggedness of virtue 
[85] 



Moral Leadership andjhe Ministry 

which compels allegiance, nor that charm of 
life which inspires devotion; nor that zeal 
which arouses opposition. The rise on the 
other hand of certain sects with higher 
standards, with hearty demands, and with 
practical fruit — one of these seizing upon and 
insisting that a possible close connection with 
a gracious Will is even so, and making dis- 
concerting headway — reflect both the meas- 
ureable failure of the Church, and the cry of 
the heart for God. The continued growth 
of the Young Men's Christian Association 
and the Salvation Army; the instituting of 
Social and University Settlements; the en- 
thusiasm for political and industrial reform- 
ers with even their material schemes, and 
the many activities for good, organized 
outside the Church and appealing to no 
religious motives, indicate not a satisfaction 
with the leadership of the Church. No one 
believes that the hold of the Church upon 
the masses is so light without good cause. 
[86] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

Most of us have sometime confessed that it 
has been too timid before rapacious and 
predatory greed, that it has rather recited 
its creed than lived it, that it has rather 
preached Christ than walked with Him, that 
it has claimed Brotherhood and been heart- 
less and cold, that it has held up the cross of 
Christ and itself been without passion. The 
Church does not greatly impress the world 
as having a great boon to offer — it is so 
without passion. Yet the Church is called to 
judge the world; and has such equipment that 
the gates of hell may not prevail against it. 

As an aggressive and daring champion of 
righteousness the minister may be outdone 
by the social reformer and by a type of 
political leader, both of whom may be with- 
out the recognized equipment for moral 
power known as religion. A journalist bent 
upon exposing fraud and injustice, and call- 
ing men to serve their brethren, may com- 
mand an audience and an influence beyond 
[87] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

the minister of the metropolis. The en- 
thusiasm of some labor leader for his brother's 
welfare overmounts the lukewarmness of the 
minister with his consolations of God and 
his law of Brotherhood. Some enthusiast 
with a fool's scheme gives his all to the cause 
that compasses only bread and is sure to 
fail, when the apostles of Christ preaching 
His cross, miserly give that God's Kingdom 
may come in their own State and in China. 
A professor of social or political science, or 
a teacher in a common school, may be 
creating individual purpose and public con- 
science beyond the minister. 

The minister holds today a place of 
waning power since diminishing numbers 
are touched by him at the point where he 
chiefly ministers. A sense of the smallness of 
his opportunity as a preacher weighs heavily 
upon the minister, and drives him to doubled 
effort and to prayer, or to catch-crowd sen- 
sationalism, or from the pulpit, and makes 
[88] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

the distress and bewilderment which burden 
his soul. The people he reaches are so few, 
and the community itself is so great, that 
whatever he feels to be the need, he has 
sometimes to own that he counts for little. 
And that others share this feeling loosens 
still more his hold. 

No observing person can be indifferent to 
this waning interest in preaching. A sum- 
mer or two ago, in a suburban village of the 
wholly better class in New England, in a 
church seating seven hundred, the writer 
preached to a congregation of sixty, one- 
fifth men. But for most of the day the 
streets and cars were thronged with people, 
more men than women, to whom no preacher 
had had chance to speak a message, and 
whom no one from Christ had brought 
into judgment. Whoever was leading these 
people into purpose and hope, he was not 
a preacher, and while of course my work 
that day was not lost, he who had had set 
[89] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

upon him the seal of moral leader and was 
equipped with the approved motives and 
facts, was as one without power and honor. 
I ventured to make lament to my host, a 
justice of a court, who assured me that while 
the people are not in the churches, the 
ministers must not think they are going to 
ruin; a hundred other moral influences are 
at work. In his mind the minister is being 
rivaled if not superseded; and that is just 
our alarm. With this decline in church 
attendance continuing, one reflects that the 
truths and the ideals and the experience of 
religion will come from other leaders, appeal- 
ing by unofficial methods and motives, and 
— as one has a right to fear — be supplanted 
by things of vanity. 

The current depreciation of the minister's 
worth, the temporary waning of his power 
and his consequent loss of leadership, come, 
however, unquestionably to some extent, 
out of a general inappreciation of facts. 
[90] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

It is not as if the minister is wholly to 
blame. The very greatness of the minister's 
work, the difficulty of his task, the sublimity 
of the life he is to live, easily give chance to 
undervalue his worth and to lay upon him 
blame. The layman's impatience of organ- 
ized thought; the unmet demand for preach- 
ing that is inspirational and comforting and 
interesting instead of instructive and thought- 
ful; the scorn of the fact that all real and 
permanent gains wait for the conquest of 
the understanding; the layman's overweening 
demand for mere numbers of converts and 
tangible results — often unmet — all con- 
tribute to the current loss of regard for relig- 
ion, the minister and the Church. The 
inappreciation of the power of iniquity, the 
weakness of human nature, the unbridled 
paganism of the pursuit of wealth and of 
pleasure, the veil upon the invisible and 
spiritual, the relaxed discipline of the home, 
the increase of wealth and ease and the 
[91] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

attendant loose and ungirt habit of life, the 
shrinking from such self-denial as is common 
with less soft circumstances, — all make 
response to valiant living feeble, the minister 
of goodness to be scorned and the Gospel 
itself unwelcome. The general discredit of 
the authority of religion attendant upon 
the discovery that certain views once cher- 
ished with positiveness must be modified, 
with the weakening of the former motives, 
and the failure to appreciate the infinitely 
greater persuasion of the motives that rule 
in their place, — are large factors in the light 
holding of religion. 

The laity, too, have assumed functions 
formerly the minister's, the very success of 
the minister making rivals for his place. He 
does not seem to have kept in advance of 
those he has been leading. Colleges founded 
by the Church have likewise come to maturity 
and vigor, while the Church which founded 
them has lost control. 

[92] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

But in our passion to measure and count 
tangible results it must always be remem- 
bered that the preaching of the Gospel of 
Christ and the living of holy lives, influence 
men's thought and feeling and activity, and 
quietly shape the common conscience, by 
which bodies of men and individuals, which 
have not the name of Christ, are inspired, 
and in accord with which they do their work. 
One may not care to have the Church's name 
upon a statute if Christ's spirit pervades it, 
nor to have the Church take up every reform 
if the men it inspires with His passion will 
do it. The preacher of Christ may not 
appear in the transactions between buyer 
and seller, but in his community, it is likely 
that he dictates terms to both. He creates 
and gives direction to a conscience which is 
sensitive to the presence of injustice, and 
under command of which the great reforms 
move forward. His position is like that of 
an engineer applying driving power to 
[93] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

machinery. The Church unquestionably is 
still controlling power and influence in the 
life that surrounds it. Nine-tenths of all 
the social workers in America today are 
members of Christian Churches. The vast 
and varied philanthropy of the land is fed 
by the same spring. Trade is softened, 
politics restrained, the home purified, men 
and women kept from vice or raised to 
grand virtue, intemperance and prostitu- 
tion intolerable monsters, because of a con- 
science created by the Church. One may 
envy the minister of Christ his place and 
his power. He does foundation work, be- 
yond sight and beyond measure. He 
cleanses the whole atmosphere in which all 
the common relations live. The whole crea- 
tion waits for his revealing. When he comes, 
all vagrant and lifeless interests are ordered 
and vivified. Everything liveth whither 
this stream cometh. 
Considering the soul of more worth to God, 
[94] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

and to a man himself, than the whole world, 
as the Master declares the soul to be, and 
considering the loss of the soul as the loss of 
the mind, to which it is likened, — which 
hints also the horror of the loss — the minis- 
ter, giving himself to the saving of souls, 
however little he be esteemed, is after all 
the sanest and worthiest man in his com- 
munity. Compared with this servant's 
rational work, all the much-honored passion 
of men for gaining things is as the chasing 
of phantoms by the insane. 

The minister is disesteemed because of the 
very interests he is devoted to. This is no 
mere fancy. In more than one day it has 
been so. To this effect is a warning of 
Christ. One who has himself suffered is 
not likely to miss the meaning of the cross 
of Christ and of Nero's gardens. Many 
still today suffer reproach, whose manner 
of life is foolishness to the world. They are 
regarded more persons to be pitied, than 
[95] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

elect to be honored; ignored than perse- 
cuted or praised. But the minister himself 
will never fall into making what men think 
of him a substitute for his own or his Lord's 
approving. However little he be esteemed 
of men he is of matchless worth to God. 
The old-time reverence for the minister of 
Christ is nearer the truth than the new scorn. 
When other men's work is burned up as 
chaff, his work will endure as gold. 

The initiative and sustaining faith of 
great movements and of common goodness, 
springs from the Church, which is eminently 
the institution with insight and moral power 
enough to create conscience and religious 
conviction. It is not its function to organize 
armies and draft laws and head revolutions 
and reap harvests. It plants the Word in 
the souls of men, and conscience springs up 
and fruits in worthy doings. Though it be 
forgotten that the Kingdom of God comes 
not with observation, and his throne seem 
[96] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

to be shaken, it remains true that through 
the Church the minister of Christ is today 
pre-eminently the moral leader in his 
community. 

With this avowal made, one may be allowed 
to point out that there are factors touching 
organized religion, contributory to a waning 
leadership of the ministry, that are valid for 
criticism. The equipment, the calling, the 
work of the Church are grand, but compared 
with its warrant, its zeal is languor and its 
method futile. 

Judged by such heroism as is known in war; 
judged by such heroism as has been known 
time and again in the Church; judged by 
such enthusiasm as is known today in com- 
merce and fortune-making, the Church is 
bankrupt. More than once the Church en- 
listed the daring, the strength, the heroism 
of men unto martyrdom and in the cause of 
conquest; men dared to die in their alle- 
giance, for a creed, for a view of the sacra- 
[97] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

ment, to possess a holy place. Monasticism 
was a misguided program, but the ardor 
of monasticism challenges our admiration. 
Their administration was faulty, but the 
spirit of the Jesuits is impressive. That the 
Church has today a like zeal for righteous- 
ness no one can maintain. The effective 
ones are not found in it, or at least are not 
enlisted in its service. It is kept in life by 
men of a less power and nerve, while the 
fresh and bounding life flows through other 
channels, or stagnates because it is not 
commanded and challenged. 

Judged especially by its own standard the 
Church is nerveless. If it does not see its 
task, it is as much at blame. Its personal 
morality is but a little above the common. 
It is not grand, magnificent nor enthusiastic, 
as its charter warrants. It fears, or at 
least fails, to attack the evils that prey upon 
life; is too weak or too cowardly to challenge 
flaunting and impudent wrong; is too easy- 
[98] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

going or indifferent to take up a really 
active program for righteousness. Perhaps 
it does not persuade even itself of the tremen- 
dous difference between right and wrong, 
nor know its heritage in the will and glory 
of God. 

No only is the Church program not seri- 
ously faced, it is insignificant and petty. 
It must often impress one as being quite off 
the beaten and practical way of life, unre- 
lated to the real needs of men, and a kind of 
doubtful and unearthly goodness, as if it 
aimed to get men into another world instead 
of making them masterful in this. While 
its place in fact is in the very midst of the 
storms of the Academy, of industry, and pol- 
itics — in the midst of all social agitations. 
These things, requiring to be judged by 
Christ, and conformed to Him, are its field. 
Its program should be great and masterful 
exceedingly, as its power is. 

Nor does the Church set up for men a 
[99] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

virile standard, nor insist upon it. Its 
expectation is laid rather to the level of 
depravity, and not raised to a level with 
man's capacity for sacrifice. The conscience 
of the Church is not sensitive to great sins. 
Surely the shame of divorce, and the liquor 
traffic, and men's uncleanness, all brazen 
and presumptuous, challenge rebuke and 
judgment. 

The Church does not feel the challenge 
of vast stretches of human waste. In 
several large communions, feeling is empha- 
sized as an end — emotion, contemplation 
more than conduct, the emotionally pleasure- 
able and not the energetic. The impression is 
made that the content of religion is a fairy 
tale to enrapture, and not a program to be 
lived, as if everything is done when one has 
felt tenderly and admired. Its faith is 
often pietistic and not practical. Its ideal 
as militant is not accepted, if known. Con- 
version is made so petty and slight a matter 
[100] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

as to merit scorning. The ruggedness and 
heaviness of the cross are turned into the 
vainest and most trivial of matters. The 
cross may even be taken out of men's lives 
because it has been set up in Christ's. The 
Church is without the daring of real sacri- 
fice. It plods along its contented way 
without a serious heroism in behalf of the 
goodness men in other days died for. Only 
a few in any Church suffer hunger or cold for 
Christ's sake. 

The Church is powerless to command even 
the material resources involved. It begs unto 
faintness and to men's contempt for neces- 
sary money, and to secure it resorts some- 
times to methods that betray how slight is its 
hold upon even the interest, not to say the 
sacrifice, of the community. There is money 
for a hundred other good interests in abun- 
dance — schools, libraries, science, sports — 
not for the Church's program. The con- 
trast is brought into strong relief when a 
[101] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

church stands in the midst of a great com- 
munity of comfortable houses and loaded 
tables and well-dressed people, with such an 
expenditure of money as the world has never 
before known, and has to beg for a paltry 
few dollars to maintain itself from shabbi- 
ness. Yet the Church is in command of mo- 
tives that have led men to give their lives. 

The Church schools are shifty and vain, 
and by no charity can be called serious 
enterprises. It is as if they were content 
to be doing something without raising the 
question of efficiency. Resort is not infre- 
quently had to a teaching force whose 
unblushing impotence is the more condemn- 
ing that it does not know its shame. No 
secular enterprise could live with such dis- 
credit. The traditional Sunday School con- 
vention, as still common, in the light of the 
new teaching, and of a credible theology, 
suggests a man in his dotage. But here a 
new order of things is preparing. 
[102] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

The Church halts before its missionary 
program — the one enterprise that has in 
it the spirit of sacrifice and real courage. 
Other interests are imperial. Our politics 
and our commerce are making conquests 
in competition with all the world. But 
the Church is not awake to the imperial 
character of its Lord: it does not believe in 
Christ for the world. If it did, it would 
go forth with mighty passion. There are 
no closed doors but the unwillingness of 
prepared men to give themselves, and the 
unwillingness of Christian stewards to give 
gifts. There are heroisms, but the Church 
does not enlist them. Other things are con- 
ceived of as framed into the universe, but 
Christ is not known as essential. The chief 
aspect of the Church touching the militant, 
is the modern missionary movement, but 
even here its courage is not widely nor 
enthusiastically shared. The ample logic 
of our faith is not trusted. 
[103] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

It is only because sturdy measures are 
not to be ignored in a matter of this impor- 
tance, and with the conviction that the 
words will not be taken to apply indiscrimi- 
nately, that one would be encouraged to bring 
charges of weakness against the ministry. 
But for the sake of good many a risk may be 
taken. It seems true that the ministry has 
become mediocre; for considerable part 
without enthusiasm or passion for real 
goodness. It is a hard saying, that this 
mediocrity extends to morals, but if is meant, 
not a comparison with common standards, 
but with the extraordinary known among 
men and with the standard of Christ and the 
glory of religion, the charge cannot be 
refuted. He may have foundation for quiet- 
ness and confidence and victory in the 
midst of the crosses of life, a measure of life 
quite attainable and attained: but how 
fares it with the minister? He may have 
such reposeful strength as to take the experi- 
[104] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

ences of life without flinching and with 
radiant hope; such challenging heroism as 
to dare attack iniquity and to stake every 
worldly gain: but is this glory common? 

We cannot do better than to search our 
hearts here. I recall what a marveling 
there was in one parish when death touched 
to sleep one of the minister's children, and 
he was disturbed unto despair and misery, 
who had no anchorage in the goodness and 
wisdom of God. There is foundation for 
that repose and equilibrium of soul that the 
trustful know, but he was wrecked like many 
another faithless one. But the Gospel is 
that we may mock our losses and the grave. 
I knew a minister losing money in an invest- 
ment, whose life was torn for more than a 
year by the harrow of worry, just as if there 
is not the joy that no man can take from us. 
In the face of opposition to them, I have 
known pastors to fret away the joy of life — 
pagans could not have had less hold on the 
[105] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

goodness of God, nor more bondage to fear. 
Trust in the disposition and resources and 
ordering of the world as good — the trust 
that makes it favor and all things possible — 
quite a real thing and the best in the world, 
I bear witness — they had not made the 
conviction nor the habit of life. And the 
people marveled, if not by word, by that 
more serious marveling, their discredit of 
religion. That is why religion fits into 
life only as idle tale and dream — it fits 
only so in the life of him who is set to lead. 
When, on the other hand, he comes who takes 
his pain as his chance to learn love, and by 
his faith removes this mountain; when he 
comes who counts it joy when he falls into 
manifold trials — laughs at poverty, sings 
in prison, despises shame, loves others as 
himself — religion is brought down into life 
as a real boon and tremendous good. 

The conduct of ministers in connection 
with their settlement in places of service 
[106] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

is a sore spot where ethics becomes very 
common-place. Let me here speak of no 
other man's sin since I may blush for my own. 
There was a time when I concealed the part I 
played in having my name and praise laid 
before desirable Churches, frankly places 
with a good salary. I considered no other. 
I now see I had a very feeble hold upon that 
superior life which makes one's relations 
with others direct and not diplomatic, and 
upon that love of truth and service which 
sends one to a small place, rather than have a 
large gained in that way. And I paid for 
my unf aith by the vanity of my life and the 
worthlessness of my service. 

A friend of mine within the councils of 
a Methodist Conference, held recently, 
lamented to me, what he characterized as 
"the shameless seeking of ministers for the 
good places." I myself attending a convoca- 
tion of ministers of a district of Congrega- 
tional Churches was impressed with a 
[107] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

noticeable alertness of interest in vacancies 
in desirable pastorates. This is not com- 
plained of as wicked. It is complained of 
only because it is respectable, legitimate, 
defensible; that men see nothing wrong in it. 

The Presbyterian Board of Missions has 
been unable to find a competent man willing 
to carry on its work on the Isthmus of 
Panama. No first-class man in all that 
body with the nerve to undertake this 
difficult work! But in the Government 
Service, the best engineer and medical 
officers are proud to be sent to the Canal 
Zone. 

Archdeacon Stucks of the Episcopal 
Church spent months addressing gatherings 
of Seminary students and college men, and 
appealed personally to young clergymen, 
to come to the help of the Church of Christ 
in Alaska, but no man offered. Women 
volunteered as nurses and teachers, but 
no minister would preach the Gospel and 
[108] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

administer the sacraments in a hundreds- 
of-miles parish along the Alaskan coast. 

The makeshift of a common morality 
to which ministers sometimes resort is 
confessed by one who, with so little sense of 
committing outrage, tells rather with boast- 
ing for shrewdness how he came into posses- 
sion of a set of much esteemed books. In 
consideration of the benefit that will accrue 
to the salesman when taking other orders 
to be able to say that this important man 
has bought the books, and in consideration 
of an encomium upon the books, they are sold 
to the minister at a considerable discount, 
and the books he did value enough to buy 
at the full price, they conspire it shall be 
represented he valued enough to pay the 
full price for. That may be legitimate 
business but it is not Christian conduct; 
that may be shrewdness but it is not honesty. 
A minister may do that, but he cannot do 
it and lead men, nor do it and know the best 
[109] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

of life which is of God. Laymen may do 
these things and lose not the stake of their 
profession — though they lose their souls — 
but the minister who does them loses the 
place of power or leadership among men. 

The program of many a minister is not 
such as to evince enthusiasm or passion. 
On the other hand, the mood of his program 
is oftener apologetic. The impression made 
by most sermons I have heard is of indef- 
initeness, weakness, vagueness; of an insist- 
ance upon unessentials. No distinctly good 
news was declared. The matter of the 
sermons seemed to be concerned with the 
traditions of men and not with a living am- 
plitude, or with the positive redemption of 
life. The gospel commonly declared and the 
program commonly followed are not tre- 
mendous, nor rich, nor practical, nor inter- 
esting. In a church service one would be 
apt to feel in evidence a concern for an 
elegant propriety and miss the passion of 
[110] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

the missionary and the prophet. The im- 
perial note is wanting. In a meeting of 
ministers, discussing Aims for the Ministry, 
the impression left upon me, and upon every 
other I must believe, was of men dealing 
with petty ideals, with little sense of the 
grandeur of their enterprise, and with no 
great breadth of vision, nor passion for 
service. The spirit of heroism and the 
capacity for generalship were not evidenced. 
Ministers, for most part, do not challenge 
the vicious and bad to a renewal of life, 
either because they have no vaster good to 
offer, or yet because they do not believe 
wicked men are badly off. And yet all 
authority is given the minister of Christ. 
All must know how the concern of some 
ministers is merely to get people into church 
membership, without at all compassing the 
matter of an ennobling of the life; satisfying 
themselves with the formalest and least 
appreciations of religion, if it be not rather 

mi] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

merely to show why they shall be retained 
in their pastorate or called to a better. 

The equipment of the ministry intellect- 
ually, considered from the point of view of 
a practical and ethical creed, leaves much to 
be striven for. The motives set forth for 
action are often crude and weak, if they be 
not immoral. Salvation is of the crassest 
and most impossible of kinds. Atonement 
is mechanical and commercial, rather than 
vital. The thought forms are often put for 
the essential truth. I have canvassed several 
hundred ministers to ascertain their under- 
standing of the gospel message and the good- 
ness of religion, and found relatively few who 
held an understanding simple, definite, clear, 
first hand, and great enough for enthusiasm. 

The theology of many a minister is quite 
untenable before the general intelligence, and 
discredited before the test of life. The re- 
ligious interest and emphasis are often 
wholly aside from reality. Clear and deep 
[112] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

thinking are absent as commonly as ennobling 
experience. To mention a faith that takes 
the place of real mastery or character, and a 
theory of the Atonement that makes Christ's 
cross a substitute for man's own, and the 
thought of heaven that makes the getting 
into another world the justification of vanity, 
or the putting off the achieving, of life in this, 
is to learn how strange religion must appear 
both to the practical and vital demand made 
of religion in our day, and to the genius 
of Christianity. Dramatic redemption still 
holds the place of an ethical revival, and an 
individualistic theology the place of social 
responsibility. That men recite their creed 
or unite with the Church or witness for 
Christ, is, under the leadership of many a 
minister, still the program, instead of that 
men live a Christly, mastering life, and serve 
their neighbor. To hark back to a sacred 
past to find things worthful and interesting, 
or the anticipating a glorious time, may be 
[113] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

the attitude, to the terrible ignoring of the 
only chance the soul has, and to the surrender 
of the only ground for a present religious 
interest. Thus the program of the minister 
is laid, not along the beaten highway of 
thought and action, but along the by-way of 
interest, where men of mind and will do not 
travel. 

Pastoral visitation, as it is commonly per- 
formed, is a vain thing for an apostle of 
Christ to be giving his time to compared to 
that earnest persuasion to, and that simple 
touch of, the good life of Christ, of which 
social calling is the counterfeit. To comfort 
and quiet and make heroic the soul of an- 
other by fellowship, is serious and worthful 
business, which challenges a pastor's best, 
fulfils all his other work, and is the most 
gladly welcomed of all service. In its de- 
generate practice it is without seriousness; 
is confined to the less achieving of the com- 
munity, and aims only at such connection 
[114] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

as will attract attendance upon the Church 
services. 

The program of the minister is commonly 
not held unto heroism; his effort for God 
is too much without passion. There are 
evils but they are not terrible enough to pro- 
voke attack. Standards are displayed, but 
they are not high enough to compel follow- 
ing. The news he brings is not good enough 
to raise hope and hazard. The bondage of 
men is not terrible enough to make their res- 
cue a passion. There is zeal, but it does not 
consume. Commonly the preacher's au- 
thority is but advice, not certainty born 
of experience. His rebuke is but opinion, 
not condemnation. The words he speaks are 
not seriously vindicated and proved in his 
life. At best, he has but called men to 
fight; he has not shown the glory of the 
service, the oppression of the enemy, nor 
himself gone forward. 

The not infrequent desertions from the 
[115] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

ministry go strangely with the grandeur and 
supremacy of the interest. These desertions 
are not significant when certain kinds of ser- 
vice are substituted. But in other instances, 
they are a kind of judgment. When a min- 
ister gives up his apostleship because he has 
fallen heir to a fortune, or has married a rich 
wife, or is wooed by prospect of material 
gains in business, or because he has had no 
speedy nor great promotion, or has had but 
small visible success, or has come to sixty 
years, — he has fallen away from the enthu- 
siasm for which the glory of Christ and all 
the equipment of religion is the adequate 
ground. 

The essential thing in leadership is vital 
faith. Now faith is the giving substance or 
embodiment to those ideals which we call our 
hopes. It is a great adventure. But it is 
wondrously vindicated. "I, if I be lifted up 
from the earth, will draw all men unto me," 
is the leader's assurance. If the Church has 
[116] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

lost power it is because the Church has lost 
faith. If the ministry has lost influence, it 
is because wide gulf has grown between its 
ideals in the Master and its life in His dis- 
ciples. The protest against the dominion of 
tradition which wrought in the Gospel of 
Christ may not be wholly unfit for our day — 
"The water that I shall give you shall be in 
you a well of water springing up unto ever- 
lasting life." It flows for each day. It is 
not stagnant from long standing. It is as 
fresh as the need. Faith is a present, over- 
flowing, satisfying consciousness and power of 
God. In order that this might be the priv- 
ilege of the Church, Christ gave himself — 
"that He might present the Church a 
glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle 
or any such thing." No marks of age are 
on it. It is as young and fresh as the times. 
The spirit of buoyant youth is in it. It is 
not decrepit nor old. It does not date from, 
nor live upon, the past. It has its source 
[117] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

of enthusiasm and power in itself. Its cer- 
tainty is like the certainty of those martyrs 
to whom it is tempted to go back. Only each 
day's freshness is sufficient for that day. 

Every discerning person while deploring 
that one should so write, must recognize the 
glory and height of the standard that make 
the foregoing words beyond contradiction. 
They are relative to the heroism and devo- 
tion of Christ and to the best history has 
shown. The standard contemplated is rela- 
tive to the equipment and resources of re- 
ligion. When a martyr gives himself for the 
faith, and an apostle counts all things but 
loss for Christ, and a monk is poor all his 
days that others may be rich and that his 
soul may live; when a minister has for souls 
the passion others have for gold, and is his 
such amplitude of life that passing through 
fiery trials he is not burned, and through 
floods he is not overwhelmed, and falling into 
[118] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

great tribulations, he can yet count it joy — 
there is given some revealing of that exceed- 
ing glory, for the making which our faith is 
constituted, and Christ came, and the min- 
ister is called. Without this grand loyalty 
in mind, the words written here may seem an 
attack upon sacred interests and eminently 
worthy people — a criticism wanton and 
false. I have, however, conceived of religion 
as a grandeur of life and as Christliness, and 
affirm the entire deliberateness with which 
the words have been written. 

I cannot, however, let all the foregoing 
stand without repeating that the words are 
not indiscriminately to apply. There are men 
and women in all our Churches, going in and 
out of our houses and shops, meeting us on 
the streets and in the market-place, whose 
lives are beyond the power of sorrow or of 
fear; whom faith in God has kept true and 
calm, and made achieving and full of good 

works. They are fountains of cheer and 
[119] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

peace; storms break against the rock upon 
which they have built, in vain. Having for- 
saken their all for goodness, they hunger for 
righteousness alone. They have labored to 
lay up treasures in good habits and right 
thoughts, and while they have used the world 
and the things of the world, they have loved 
only God. So they have not been hurried, 
nor confounded, nor put to shame; they are 
established, masterful, crowned. Their com- 
mon heroism is the redemption of life. 

There are people, too, in all our Churches 
who are effective instruments of justice and 
love; who will that the Kingdom of God be 
set up in the earth. They apply the law of 
Christ to their business, to their homes, and 
to public service; men with whose names it 
would be a kind of sacrilege to associate the 
thought of self; who serve their fellowmen; 
from whom other men catch the divine pas- 
sion. They are beyond the trial of things, 
because they have built on Christ. They are 
[120] 



The Ministry's Loss of Leadership 

rich, but they have learned how to abound — 
they have lived simply and have loved. 
They are poor, but they have learned how to 
be abased — they have lived contentedly and 
kept faith in God. 

There are thousands of ministers, too, 
whom the foregoing words of sharpness can- 
not touch, and upon whose manner of life 
only Christ can sit in judgment. These are 
the glory and the power of God. Their souls 
are knit to God with a great passion, and a 
zeal for God eats them up. Only God knows 
the terrible crosses they have carried. They 
fear the face of no man, and forbear not to 
declare the whole counsel of God. By the 
very greatness of these, all others are brought 
into judgment. Where the gulf exists, by 
this comparison, it has appeared, not be- 
cause the vain man's manner of life has been 
pulled down below the actual, but because 
the standard of Christ has been set up. 

[121] 



CHAPTER V 
THE POWER TO CONSTRAIN OR LEAD 

HOWEVER the somewhat discredit of 
the Church and its leadership has 
come about, it is the minister's task 
to gain for religion a place of reverence and 
authority, and to constrain men to adjust 
themselves to the spiritual possessions of the 
race. One may point out that there is lack 
of laymen with a real grasp of theology, who 
are impatient of the ordered thought which 
is to the minister so fundamental; one may 
blame these transition times; one may charge 
that the men of nerve and capacity have 
gone, not into the ministry, but into places 
paying great money; one may lament how 
strong is the spirit of the world. And one 
may deplore it all. But it is the minister's 
[122] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

business to turn this captivity. In retrieving 
the spiritual fortune of the Church, and to 
this end recovering his own place in the 
world's reverence, the minister of God is 
challenged to show how much of a leader he 
is — if he have wisdom, conviction, courage, 
magnitude. 

There are many wise things he may do. 
There is, however, no substitute for wise 
enthusiasm for righteousness, and for Christ 
the spring and sum of it. Leadership is to 
be gained and held by a life so wise and rich, 
by a masterhood so strong, by such resource 
and power, by such quiet confidence, by 
such victory over evil, that thereby men's 
attention will be arrested, their understand- 
ing quickened, their conscience stirred, and 
their wills enlisted. If men misunderstand 
and misjudge religion, if their eyes are blinded 
to real richness, if they have habituated 
themselves to evil, the answer and the light 
and the power must be a superior life. Such 
[123] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

life is terrible rebuke, conviction of sin, and 
great constraining. This by contrast evinces 
the emptiness and vanity of life. This brings 
new hope and new endeavor. The blasting 
indifference that sweeps upon us passes over 
and is gone; there comes a flooding passion 
for the Christ who therein lives again, and 
the desert places are watered into life. 

In setting forth the facts and ideals of 
religion, and in persuading men to them by 
means of language, the preacher has very 
formidable rivals. He may not always gain 
attention nor excel here. The great poets 
and novelists and dramatists of all time have 
addressed themselves to his task, and the 
masters here live still in the books that now 
have their day of glory. Much very good 
timely literature, too, though of less perma- 
nent value, easily attracts beyond the charm 
of the preacher. The one-time province of 
the religious teacher is invaded by masters 
whose words bear greater authority and 
[124] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

charm than the utterances of all but excep- 
tional preachers. All public speech suffers 
on these accounts. The old-time lyceum 
lecturer has passed or given place to the 
cheap entertainer. The great congressional 
and parliamentary debates are no more. 

Nor can the preacher lay claim to an exclu- 
sive ear by virtue of the spiritual or religious 
quality of his utterances. The individual 
and public welfare, the spiritual possessions 
of the race, the conduct of life, are the staple 
of vast portions of literature; books become 
classic only because they reflect in best form 
the ideals of the race. One may find it 
easier on Sunday morning to decide in favor 
of a magazine article on some phase of 
political, industrial, or social betterment, 
than in favor of the sermon of the average 
preacher. The general average of intelli- 
gence is so high, and the vision of duty often 
is so clear, that the hearer may find himself 
anticipating the words of the preacher. 
[125] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

The drama, too, has vindicated itself as an 
impressive teacher of morals. Its popu- 
larity lies in its surpassing method. There 
are plays that are better than sermons. 
Hosts of people have no doubt of this. The 
stage, too, speaks to ten where the minister 
speaks to one and it speaks several times as 
often. The one-time supremacy of the vo- 
cation of the preacher is unquestionably seri- 
ously threatened. This is the day of print 
and the day of the play ; and the place of the 
comparatively indifferent public speaker has 
diminished. 

Yet the grandeur of his Gospel inherently 
marks the preacher for a leader in thought, 
and the charm and power of personal utter- 
ance overmount the printed page which 
bears the stamp of no passion. The preacher 
of Christ has unrivaled chance to sway men's 
feelings and to move their will. 

But preaching, after all, and great as its 
chance is, is really not the minister's forte. 
[126] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

It is incidental and not fundamental. He 
can move from this threatened place without 
disaster, and even with immense gain, to his 
real stronghold. His field is the practice of 
virtue. His power is the force of personality. 
Not his speaking of Christ's words, but his 
doing them. Here his function has full and 
unrivaled sway. Upon this ground he is at 
home. Here he makes books and sermons 
appear as second-hand and weak instruments. 
He recovers his place as leader of the thoughts 
and holder of the wills and destinies of men 
by the force and charm of his person. His 
power is not chiefest in his words, but in his 
character; and this gives unrivaled and re- 
sistless power to every expression of his soul. 
Christianity which the minister exempli- 
fies and would communicate, is a life, a 
superior character. It is being bigger than 
anything that can happen to one. It is an 
education or training of the will. It is right 
thinking and right feeling. But it is these 
[127] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

for the sake of the doing; the fruit of re- 
ligion is good habits of life — a superior 
being. Life is will. The only real good is a 
good will. The essence of life is doing, be- 
havior, effort, experience. Character is the 
habit of the will. 

This insistence upon the free doing of 
what we approve, that the minister accept 
as a matter of course the logic of his creed, 
that he do the Will, is involved on the very 
surface and is of the very essence of religion. 
For the sake of knowing and being and lead- 
ing, he must wholly do the Will. It is the 
widest door to service. He will do more by 
his living than by his mere preaching, so 
much so that his whole stake may be said to 
be his life. 

The current emphasis in educational theory 
and practice, the conclusion of the study of 
the laws of personal growth and influence, is 
tremendous in its insistence upon this fact of 
action. "The teacher must first greaten 
[128] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

himself," states the method: "No impres- 
sion without expression," states the law. 
One act is worth a thousand feelings. In- 
struction by another is as nothing compared 
to that education which is an entrance into 
the doing of what has been learned. For 
the sake of greatening his own life, for the 
ennobling of his person, the minister must 
fully commit himself to a program of hearty 
endeavor. 

We seem to learn by doing. Education is 
only through effort. Current treatises on 
psychology are at one in this characteristic 
insistence. The central place of the will in 
education — the emphasis upon doing — 
marks the present trend in education. 1 
The place of manual training in our schools; 
the use of the laboratory method; the estab- 

1 " The willing department of our nature . . . domi- 
nates both the conceiving department and the feeling 
department." — James, The Will to Believe, p. 114. Com- 
pare also Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, 
p. 97 fol.; and King, Rational Living, p. 145 fol. 

[129] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

lishing of trade and experiment and practice 
schools; the return to the apprentice method 
in our multiplied technical schools; the in- 
crease of the clinic and of hospital practice in 
the study of medicine; the study of law by 
the case method, and the recognized value 
of experience in the work of life, — all show 
the primal place of will in the current method 
of education. We know nothing until we 
have practised it. Nothing is ours until it 
has passed into our blood. The only thing 
that makes a deposit in us and leaves its 
trace is action. Contemplation without 
action along its line soon gluts our vital 
processes. It is so out of keeping with the 
current spirit that for the Church to give it 
sole or first emphasis is to invite disdain. 

The principle has the most practical recog- 
nition. A young man of my acquaintance, 
fitting himself for paper-making, now that he 
has graduated from college, has gone into a 
mill, there, by doing the work on various 
[130] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

steps of the process, to familiarize himself 
with the manufacture. With such practice 
established so positively and generally, re- 
ligion can no longer stop with doctrines and 
feelings. It, too, must turn upon the will. 
The demand has already gone forth for a 
religion of action. 

This principle recognizes that one's own 
life is begotten of action, and has its applica- 
tion, first, to the source of the minister's own 
religious certainty. It is not by thought or 
logic alone that one comes to a positive and 
enthusiastic acceptance of the truth. Obedi- 
ence is rather the organ of knowledge. The 
way to truth is over truth, and the way to 
know more is to do some. Thinking, feeling, 
and willing are each acted upon, modified, 
strengthened, by the others. We can never 
be sensitive to ideals nor feel motives, nor 
have insight nor enthusiasm, save as we put 
our feelings and thoughts into action. This 
is the veriest commonplace. Not to do the 
[131] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

truth one believes is to cease to believe it. 
To admire and praise and not to will is moral 
suicide. Our nature is a unit — its parts are 
parts of a whole, and must work together and 
support each other. Willing, or action, is as 
important and as indispensable to life as 
thinking or feeling. Doing is the other wing 
by which we rise; either knowing or doing 
alone is unable to lift us up or move us for- 
ward. Like self -culture and self-sacrifice — 
to recognize the principle in a little different 
field — contemplation and action are insep- 
arable. If the will lags behind the thought, 
even thought is uncertain. 

It is impossible for the preacher to get even 
a real message or positive conviction save as 
he fearlessly and magnificently does the will 
of God, and quite up to the level of his admi- 
ration and knowledge. A grand message 
even can be compassed only by him who dares 
grandly to live. He will be without insight 
and compelling enthusiasm for the Sermon on 
[132] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

the Mount who does not do some of it unto 
sacrifice. "Do not merely think; try " is 
an injunction of insight. Taste and see that 
the Lord is good — you can never really 
know it by thinking or by feeling. More 
times than people know, their fainthearted- 
ness is the barrier to their belief: their un- 
faithfulness accounts for their lack of insight. 
The god of this world has blinded their eyes. 
The best commentator upon the Scriptures 
is the valiant doer of deeds; not a mere 
scholar in a library, nor a moral weakling 
anywhere. The preacher will wait for his 
message, and the pastor will wait for his 
program, and the disciple for any zeal, till he 
walks with God, and by a divine life enters 
into that high fellowship. Given partner- 
ship in some daring undertaking, one comes 
to vision. "The pursuit of the moral ideal 
is the path to certainty about God/' The 
Gospel cannot be learned from the words of 
another, nor from any book. It is learned in 
[ 133 ] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

the clash of wills. Unless we experience a 
serious conflict of wills, vision is apt to for- 
sake us. The ability to grasp and to under- 
stand waits for the ennobling of the life by 
action. Religion is will directed by reason, 
driven on by feeling. 

Doctrine comes out of life as life comes 
out of doctrine. Men have been saying 
creeds — explaining and defending without 
power, dogmas they do not vitally know. 
The determining factor of reality in theology 
is rather the experience of the soul. He 
who does the Will knows the doctrine. Who- 
soever loveth, that is, serveth, knoweth God. 
The theology of St. Augustine, it has many 
times been pointed out, took its positiveness, 
as well as its characteristic shape, from his 
religious experience. The transference of 
religion from the region of dogma and his- 
tory to the region of experience is once more 
the craving of the times. The only man who 
can bring order out of our theological chaos 
[134] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

and undergird our unsure thinking, is the 
heroic doer of deeds. The practical trend 
of theology in our day, and the intense pas- 
sion for reality, are born out of the insistence 
upon the test of life. One may repeat a 
creed; but it is not his own until he has 
experienced it. It takes weak hold of his 
life until he has laid by achievement the 
foundations in his own soul. It is easy to 
echo St. Paul or another, but such echo is 
not compelling in certainty. 

The high-handed and free-handed doing 
of the right urged here will quite clarify 
the vision, make sensitive the feeling, and 
strengthen the motive; it will fill with pas- 
sion the dull indifference to good that lies 
heavy upon the ministry in our day, and is 
cause of so much disinterest in worthful 
things, and despair of soul. We are gorged 
with truth and knowledge. They have 
grown stale to us. We respond to neither 
our convictions nor our admirations. There 
[135] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

is indifferent relish for the very sublimity of 
religion. Nothing would so freshen life and 
give appetite for righteousness as high- 
handed endeavor and sacrifice. It would 
fire enthusiasm; it would give keen relish; 
it would give first-hand experience instead 
of second-hand knowledge; it would lift to 
high vision; it would give certainty. In a 
word, it would enlarge life to the power of 
high degree; it would glorify and bless the 
soul; it would make superior men; it would 
create leaders. 

This, the insistence of all educational 
theory in our day, is the offspring of the 
spirit of the times. Nothing is so out of 
joint with the age as mere theory; the times 
call for the practical — for reality. Men 
are impatient of a religion that does not 
touch today, that does not work out in life; 
of claims that are not justified by life. 
They have cast out a theology that was 
scholastic, conventional, formal, and impos- 
[136] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

sible. They are relaxing hold upon a Bible 
that is made to tell of a God who has ceased 
to speak and to act. They are losing inter- 
est in a Church that in these times of enter- 
prise is prudent, careful, timid, and without 
superior fruit. They are not even respectful 
in their thinking to a preaching that does 
not have authority in practice. That scheme 
of things simply cannot endure that does 
not vindicate its right to be by its inherent 
worth or weight. He who preaches and 
does not do is sounding brass. Whether or 
not he knows it, the people know it; he is 
not genuine. The good of religion is tre- 
mendous — the life it leads into is like a new 
order of being. The call is to prove this 
true in the way it notably has been proved 
true, in the only way it can be proved true, 
— in life. ] 

For his own sake and for another's sake 
the minister must let himself freely loose 
upon every good thing; he must simply do 
[137] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

what he believes and admires. He must 
sanctify himself. People are insisting that 
this be seriously attempted; that tfris be 
done. And they will follow those who do 
it — are following those who do it. They 
are the masterful ones, and, as far as organ- 
ized religion is concerned, this makes the 
situation in our day. 

The experience of the race gathered up in 
our sacred books and lying beneath our 
theology is at one with current educational 
theory in its insistence, that for the purpose 
of enriching another's life the incomparable 
thing is a noble life. For the sake of influ- 
ence as well as for the sake of vision and 
certainty, the minister must nobly live. 
Goodness is communicated from a person to 
a person. Character is caught from another. 
Life is begotten of life. Nothing is so con- 
straining as the Sermon on the Mount in 
action. It is because we love that others 
love. The dynamic of Christianity is a 
[138] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

superior person. The good seed are the 
children of the Kingdom. A cause may 
languish until one comes who incarnates it, 
identifies it with himself, and then it makes 
headway with resistless power. Passion and 
enthusiasm, without which high achieve- 
ment cannot be, involve persons. The 
transforming environment is a transcendent 
person. The first effective witnesses were 
martyrs. A friend is one who makes us do 
what we ought. So it is not a truth nor a 
law, but a Friend, that saves us. 

This is the fact expressed in the doctrine 
of the Incarnation. It is by the divine 
person of Christ that men are saved — the 
popular view must not be allowed to corrupt 
the real principle. Religion at heart is a 
moral power, and that power is communi- 
cated by a person. Every serious religion 
has recognized the fact. In almost every 
religion, the gods have once lived and wrought 
as men. 

[139] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

In whatever way conceived, Christ saves 
us. All theologies are at one on the fact. 
The heart of Christianity is Christ. The 
centrality of Christ in modern theology is in 
recognition of the central place of life — of 
the tremendous power of a holy person for 
the education of the soul. It is not truth, 
it is not law; it is a person that is the great 
education. "As the husband is, the wife 
is." Religion, when evaporated into a phi- 
losophy, or into an abstract ideal, loses its 
power. Many lessons by bitter experience 
have been learned here. Character is be- 
gotten of character. Personality is begotten 
of personality. Superiority is begotten of 
superiority. "Because I live, ye shall live 
also," broadly tells the story. What a man 
does and is, is worth more than all he says, 
and knows and feels. 1 

1 " Our need is less a matter of direct teaching and preach- 
ing than of atmospheric influence, example, pure speech, 
gentle manners, sweet temper, strong handling, firm step- 
ping in virtue." — DuBois, The Natural Way, p. 248. 

[140] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

The doctrine of the Incarnation is in- 
cluded in the larger doctrine of Creation. 
God does not hold himself aloof from, but 
expresses himself in the visible and historical 
and personal order of things. Christ is not 
merely the Truth and the Way; He is the 
Life. God's will is commensurate with His 
thought. His will or love is a gracious 
energy going forth through this goodly 
frame and manifest in Jesus Christ and in 
all good people. To think and to feel are 
for God to act. God is not wholly outside 
his world, but is in it and through it, the 
life of our lives. That is the necessity of 
creation. 

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit safe- 
guards the same fact. Now the eman- 
cipation and the enlargement of life are 
associated in theology with the Holy Spirit. 
And the Holy Spirit is God in a human life. 
He is an incarnation of God of even date. 
Stripped of its traditional suggestions, the 
[141] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

doctrine means that holy life begets holy 
life. The good seed are the children of the 
Kingdom. Holiness is constrainingly beau- 
tiful. By manifestation of the truth — by 
an actual living it — it is commended to 
every kind of conscience. A really good 
person wonderfully rebukes of sin, calls to 
new hope, inspires new endeavor, and so 
works the enriching of life. 

Education is by contact with persons. 
By fellowship with another, one comes to 
think and feel and appreciate and act like 
that other. Instruction is a feeble thing 
which involves neither feeling nor will. 
Character is not taught; it is caught. To 
know the truth is far from doing it. What 
is chiefly needed is the power to practise it. 
The commonest thing in the world is advice, 
and the most impotent. The least common 
is an incarnation of advice, but it is resist- 
less. Merely to instruct in moral things, to 
utter commandments, to point out laws, to 
[142] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

preach the Gospel, — this is much less than 
the best. Many a preacher has reaped scant 
harvest, and has come to doubt because of 
the feeble response men have made to his 
preaching; — even the serious attention of 
men has not been arrested. Mere preaching 
as a matter of fact, whether or not preachers 
themselves know it, has come to be the by- 
word of the achieving world. It has been 
certainly discredited by the slight interest 
it has lately preserved, and by its scant 
power for the redemption of life. The 
beauty of the moral ideal as spoken is the 
admiration of all. Both thought and feeling 
are taken captive by many a sermon. But 
preaching is yet but a kind of calling to 
battle; it is not a battle. Clearly the call 
in this day is for men who will themselves 
take up and live and make real the moral 
ideal. Christ must live again. The min- 
ister who would compel to Christ must not 
declare Him with less power, but must live 
[143] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

Him with more. Indeed these two cannot 
be separated. Can one persuade to cheer- 
fulness who is not himself cheerful? Can 
one fire another to patriotism who is not 
himself patriotic? Can one stir heroism 
who himself shrinks therefrom? This at 
any rate is in accord with the discernment 
of the common wisdom of our day, and mere 
preaching is longer without normal power 
or respect. The leader of our day is not a 
herald; he is first a doer of the word. We 
believe in action; we believe in will; we be- 
lieve in the power of life. 

The practical significance of this fact for 
the minister is great beyond imparting. 
His whole office and aim is the enriching 
and the ennobling of the common life. He 
is the minister of religion. His work is the 
communicating of the character or life of 
God to men — the producing of quiet, re- 
sourceful and superior people. He is to 
make effective all the available moral power; 
[144] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

to find and to apply to men the regenerative 
influence. He is Christ's mediator. His 
must be no less than his Master's purpose. 
He is to make a society of superior and 
serviceable people. 

For the sake of sanctifying others the 
minister must sanctify himself. It was .the 
Master's own program. The power of Chris- 
tianity is the moral splendor and excellence 
of Christ. " I, if I be lifted up from the earth, 
will draw all men unto me," is the secret. 
To impart a superior life, the minister must 
have a superior life to impart. The spiritual 
stream can rise no higher than the fountain. 
The person can effect no more than his own 
weight. He can give no more than himself. 
Life is only from life. Apart from this, 
effort along other lines is simply wasted 
travail. The minister's confidence, for the 
ennobling of life, must be the Lord's — 
"Because I live, ye shall live also." 

The minister may lure himself into using 
[ 145 ] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

makeshifts for this serious program, but his 
being of account dates from the time he is 
persuaded that his chief business is to live 
a transcendent and masterful life. When 
he lives this, the Kingdom for which he has 
been pleading will come with power. For 
the sake of leading men to God, the min- 
ister must himself live God's life. His 
influence with others as his own knowledge 
and happiness, depends upon it. Practi- 
cally his whole efficiency is conditioned by 
his character. For instance, no indifference 
and no objection to religion can live in the 
face of this witness. On the other hand, by 
his loveliness men are constrained to love. 
The contagion of his cheer and courage and 
masterhood is inescapable. We are trans- 
formed into his likeness whose likeness is 
unto Christ. God is never so real and per- 
suasive as when manifest in a person. 

Teaching and preaching are conditioned 
as to force, as well as to content, by per- 
[146] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

sonality. A sermon is the transcript of a 
person. Every genuineness acts with its 
own weight. No bad man can really preach. 
That is, he cannot transform life by what he 
declares. Solomon is the standing warning 
of the futility. The remedy for ineffective 
preaching is to glorify the life. Not to 
speak again of the condition for insight — 
were one merely to say over the persuasions 
of another, no one would be impressed. 
The sermon is no weightier than the preacher. 
The office is no greater than the officer. 
The message is no weightier than the mes- 
senger. The force of Jesus' words was in 
Himself. Preaching is but an incident in 
the minister's work. To live the truth is 
that to which he is called. 

One recognizes an example of this insight 
in the provision of the truly Christian priest 
of Gilhoc, of whom Pastor Wagner tells, 
who, laboring for tolerance and sympathy 
among the religious denominations, at his 
[147] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

death asked that he might be borne to his 
grave by heads of families from the different 
denominations; and in the provision of a 
great expositor who, the better to make 
effective all his expositions of " Thou soweth 
not the body that shall be/' directed that his 
body be not buried, but burned. 

The recognition of this general fact has 
given rise to a wide-spread dissatisfaction 
with the former methods and matter of 
Church schools. The emphasis, in every 
creditable school, has shifted from the sole 
teaching of facts, of creed or Bible, to an 
education by contemplation of worthy people. 
The study of heroic life is on the right track. 
Fellowship with the noble and strong is re- 
demptive, while mere information and knowl- 
edge are relatively without inspiring power. 1 

But the study of heroes of another day 

1 Admirable educational courses based upon this valid 
principle are available in the text-books of the Graded Sun- 
day School Publishing Company, Boston. 

[148] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

lays terrible condemnation upon the poverty 
of this, and suggests the real task of the 
moral leader. It is that he himself grandly 
and gloriously live. The Old Testament 
leaders must be outdone. There is some- 
thing better than to be going back to Peter 
and John. It is ourselves to live as worthily 
in this day. It is to manifest the glory of 
God. This is indeed serious business, but 
it is well-nigh the whole stake of the min- 
ister. He needs to realize that his power 
to save lies in his willingness to live Christ's 
life. 

The moral power of the teacher is much 
more than the bare facts of the teaching. 
The problem of religious education is the 
problem of the teacher. The main thing is 
to afford a contact with life. This is the 
weal or woe of the home, whose power for 
life has passed into a proverb. The real 
equipment of the school is the teacher. The 
dynamic of life is a person. What is a 
[149] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

precept or an entreaty compared to a friend? 
A book — is it not but a sorry makeshift for 
a life? 

The disappointing output of our Church 
schools is doubtless because we enthrone the 
teaching and scorn the contact of life. In- 
deed, the whole idea of a school for religious 
instruction, with its sole emphasis on knowl- 
edge, may be a big mistake. The work is 
easy, but it is futile. What is better is 
fellowship, companionship, friendship, love, 
— to realize and so to convey the grace of 
God. This is hard, but it is rewarding. 
Jesus chose the Twelve that they might be 
with Him. The people when they came 
face to face with the glory of the apostles, 
remembered that they had been with Jesus. 

Organizations get their moral power from 
some person. Machinery while good for 
control is useless for creation. For creation 
the requisite is a person. The heart of the 
Fratres Minores is St. Francis. A republican 
[150] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

form of government does not succeed by 
virtue of its constitution, but by virtue of 
the character of the people it works among. 
Experience has shown that an American 
city, with the ideal form of government, can 
be the worst governed in the world. The 
success of co-operation waits for the co- 
operative man. Many a minister has hailed 
some new movement or some organization 
with hope, to find it in his own hands only 
failure. Other men made it go. The power 
was not in the by-laws, but in the energy, 
wisdom, enthusiasm, — that is, the charac- 
ter — of the man. An organization is what 
the head of it is. Enthusiasm, persistence, 
insight, mastery, sacrifice, hope, — these 
come not with a constitution, but with a 
person. The colonel makes the regiment, if 
the regiment does not make the colonel. 
Neither is made by the manual of arms. 
"Where MacGregor sits is the head of the 
table." 

[151] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

A Church's real strength comes not with 
great numbers of formal adherents, but with, 
it may be, a few people of passion and quality. 
The madness for mere numbers is a fool's 
folly. Judgment is not upon how many are 
saved, but upon the fashion after which they 
are saved. A whole army has but confusion 
of counsels and fear until the general is 
found. Then one man of confidence and 
courage leads the triumph. Progress is writ- 
ten in the lives of a few great men — it is 
not the story of mass movements. 

For the most part a Church waits for a 
man. When he comes who is baptized not 
with water but with the Spirit of Christ, the 
dry bones will live. The people will first 
be puzzled, but their indifference is at an 
end — their sneer shows that condemnation 
has been laid upon their hearts. Coming to 
vision is but the beginning — the wholesome 
contagion spreads and works healing and 
mighty ennobling of life. And incidentally 
[152] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

the problems, both of congregations and of 
material support for the Church, are solved. 

By both experience and by theory, the 
missionary method is changing. On new 
ground, moral power is sifted, compared, 
challenged. Here method is stripped of 
traditional old clothes and is measured by 
what it can effect. Forever the former 
exclusive emphasis upon preaching has passed 
away. What has come is the setting down 
in the midst of the vain life, a section of 
Christian society — the Church, the home, 
the school, the hospital — a Kingdom of 
Life. The contrast is vivid and compelling. 
Christ lives again in the midst of the despair 
and shame, and suffers anew His Passion, 
and hope springs up, as in a desert the 
flowers lift up their heads when the rain 
falls upon the parched ground. 

The influence of living the Word is never 
so narrow as is that of preaching it. The 
despair of the preacher is that the godless 
[153] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

community does not come within reach of 
his voice. There is thus no leverage. This 
security does not pertain when the agency 
is a life. The spirit pervades the very 
atmosphere, becomes common knowledge 
and public conscience, and so convicts of 
sin. From it, as from the presence of God, 
there is no escape. 

The supreme interest and the longest 
attention of men are in life, action. This 
makes the fascinating interest of the drama. 
Compared with this the preacher's sermon, 
if it deal with but bare ideas, is clearly seen 
to be weak. The wise man who is eager to 
lead men into a glory of life, will thus rather 
enact the tragedy of glory before men's 
eyes. For this he has the highest warrant. 
This method would first bring into judgment 
the worth of the minister's work. For con- 
sider: if this man's life were staged, what 
would there be in it to redeem it from petti- 
ness and to make it elevating and interesting: 
[154] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

what of passion or heroism would there be 
in it to call out men's admiration and will? 
Looked at in this light must he not see with 
what earnestness and seriousness and gran- 
deur he must live if he would even interest 
men, much more lead them to God? But 
can he for a moment doubt the tremendous 
power with men of a genuine partnership 
with Christ? 

It may be, for instance, that for real suc- 
cess in some great campaign for righteous- 
ness, in a State, or for the creation of moral 
standards, a few men will have to die. Con- 
sciences will be dull and heavy, interest will 
be slow and tedious, enthusiasm will not be 
created and gather, till some seal their con- 
victions with their blood. Then the supreme 
value of the good has been witnessed to. 
And so, they that these men turn in their 
death, are more than all they turn in their 
life. 

The race's moral capital has been created 
[155] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

and laid up by those who unto sacrifice have 
actually done the right. This is pre-emi- 
nently the added something that works for 
change; the proper condition for progress. 
The common privileges insured by the 
State, the natural love of the family, the 
gained momentum of purity, all the stock 
of honor and integrity accumulated in 
business, our sense of obligation and con- 
science — have behind them the ancestry of 
steadfast and unwearied fidelity of will. 
The world may not much note what men 
say: what men do gets laid up in customs 
and laws and in moral tissue, much as man's 
long trying to walk upright is capital now 
wrought into his physical structure. 

The high program I am insisting that 
the minister, as the instrument of religion, 
fulfil, would produce a person tremendously 
attractive and constraining, and be power 
for salvation. It would lift religion to infinite 
seriousness. This would be to command 
[156] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

others' allegiance. Mazzini says "The most 
appealing challenge one can give another is 
'Come and suffer.'" It is the tremendous 
stake involved that attracts the soldier. 
Men have always treated with lightness and 
indifference the easy, the prudential, the 
material. But hard tasks and forlorn hopes 
have always proved attractive. Because 
religion is made so ordinary, so respectable, 
without hazard, in our day, it fails to attract 
attention and to win admiration. Because 
it is so soft and inoffensive, it is not chal- 
lenged nor combated. Worship that is 
highest loyalty is the product of great sacri- 
fice. There is no salvation but excellence. 
Nor is there any joy like overcoming the 
hard. Even the attraction of sport is in 
the overcoming of obstacles. It is the being 
such as can catch fish, and not the fish caught, 
that is the real stake with the sportsman. 
In time of peace to get soldiers for the 
army is a labor; when war makes the life a 
[157] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

hazard, and champions are needed to die, 
the call for volunteers is thrice obeyed. To 
meet the challenge to excel in money-making 
is what gives the tremendous zest to com- 
merce. Contrary wise, "To be weak is to be 
miserable, being or doing." The greatest 
rewards and the greatest joys are where the 
greatest tasks are. Let religion sink to a 
commonplace good, and call for slight en- 
deavor, and men will treat it with disdain. 
Let it mean heroism, and the world will 
regard it. It is the blood of the martyrs 
that is the seed of the Church. Every high 
loyalty has inspired excellent ideals and 
mighty endeavors. 

The ministry will be recruited with the 
best men, it is very clear, not as is sometimes 
counseled, by making salaries larger and 
conditions of life softer. It will be recruited, 
both in numbers and in valor, when a few 
men in it brave poverty and reproach and 
death. This will lift the calling into a chal- 
[158] 



The Power to Constrain or Lead 

lenge to manhood, and make cheap and 
joyless and accusing every work that in its 
essential unfaith turns from the reproach 
of Christ to the treasures of Egypt. 

Without dividing between the various 
functions of the minister, belittling none, 
the leader knows to a certainty how the 
world is to be saved, and so meets the need 
with great majesty of soul. His passion is 
for Christ and for His Kingdom. He pushes 
forward the frontier of his own life. He 
dares tremendously and serves utterly, as 
the great before him, so that all his living is 
but a new telling of the old story of the Son 
of God, who, by living among men, and by 
dying for them, brought new life and new 
hope to the race. 



[159] 



CHAPTER VI 
THE LEADER'S PROGRAM 

RELIGION rests in the certitude that 
there is an almighty Will to be 
known and declared and rested in 
and worked with. "My Father worketh 
hitherto, and I work," states both the fact 
and its compulsion. In the might of this 
power, not his own, the moral leader goes 
forward. All things sustain it. It sustains 
all things. This Will marks the bounds 
of the leader's program. It gives him the 
authority, and grounds the enthusiasm, with- 
out which the moral leader cannot be. It is 
the reality, and it gives the majesty, which 
may indeed be lost from faith, but which con- 
stitutes the power which makes religion to dif- 
fer from all the futile plans of man's caprice. 
[160] 



The Leader's Program 

The result the moral leader is to accom- 
plish is accordingly very definite. While 
his enthusiasm is great, his program is 
wholly rational. It is really good news he 
declares. It is an enriching of the individual 
life that is his method; it is the upbuilding 
of a good society that is his end. The 
purpose of men is to be changed from the 
getting of things, to the being serviceable. 
This program, it is easy to see, runs counter 
to a deep bias of the selfish nature, and is a 
radical change from the ingrained custom 
encountered as present-day worldliness. 
Without doubt it is a new order this man 
contemplates, as different from the present 
self-regarding order as the present is from 
the old feudalism. The common life with 
its tasks and its privileges is in the heart 
of the Gospel. The Kingdom of God is a 
commonwealth. The Golden Rule is the 
law of the new society the leader sacrifices 
himself to upbuild. To get a man out of 
[161] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

himself, to enthrone the good of society — 
that, distinguished from its counterfeits, is 
the program. That one choose to lose his 
life for the sake of society, that saving 
society he may save also his own soul, and 
saving his own soul he may save also society, 
is the consistent though paradoxical pro- 
gram. To make men live as stewards of 
God and as servants of their fellowmen; that 
all good should be a common good, and that 
love should rule in men's hearts — this is 
the great task that challenges the leader's 
powers. 

Turning for a moment to speak again of 
the means for the accomplishment of this, 
the genuineness of the moral leader, his 
evident glory of soul, is his chief reliance. 
He must depend upon this asset, and know 
to an enthusiasm that he wins his Church 
and his world in winning his own soul. He 
must know that his leadership is strong by 
virtue of God and of his own surpassing 
[162] 



The Leader's Program 

goodness, and deceive not himself by think- 
ing there is a broad way. Let him first be 
Christ's and the Church will follow him, 
and be in turn the much needed power for 
God. 

Unless he first is fired with enthusiasm, 
he has no right to think of programs, and 
so the minister who would lead must be of 
a whole heart. For example, anything that 
suggests material and personal advantage 
at the expense of the moral and social, will 
defeat him. So hazardous a thing as the 
practice of poverty might definitize this 
singleness, and in a day of mad money- 
loving be the most availing protest against 
the overweening power of material things. 
How incalculable would be the moral power 
of an Order of men who, defying the attrac- 
tion of money, would in our day be as eager 
for righteousness as other men are for gold! 
Surely the greatness of the pay is not but 
the feeblest reason why one should serve in 
[163] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

a certain place. To serve where the need is 
greatest is a holier purpose. If choice is 
to be made of fields, it may well be of the 
difficult or the promising place, with per- 
haps its small material compensation and 
its greater risks — the battle-field. There is 
no denying that monasticism, with its heroic 
disdain of things, had tremendous moral 
influence in a day when the Church had 
become very worldly, and one is sometimes 
moved to plead for this witness again of 
poverty. 

In the interest of greater freedom, and 
generally on the logic that chooses unmarried 
men for the army, celibacy also, while in 
some ways a loss, would in important ways 
be a gain, at least enabling one with freer 
scorning to run the supreme risk. 

These vows have their dangers, as history 

has proved, but for certain good gains the 

risk might be taken. Taken, the spirit 

would be tremendously freed. Many and 

[164] 



The Leader's Program 

many a time have I been bound judgment 
and tongue and hand by the vain wishes of 
men upon whose friendship and support I 
was depending. I have known men to sacri- 
fice their whole influence and moral effi- 
ciency because of this bondage, or because 
they were determined to have a place with a 
good living. Stories could be told here that 
would bring blushes from the ministers of 
God. The temptation is great and very 
subtile, but that witness may be given to 
the chief good of the soul, it must be re- 
sisted. Money must not be counted at all, 
nor must life itself be held to be gain. 
Him who seeks the Kingdom of God first, 
all things conspire together to support, 
and to work for. Action in accord with 
this singleness of soul is the whole stake 
of the minister. 

The heroism of the soldier and the martyr 
must be his who bears the message of Life. 
He is to live amid great scenes and stirring 
[165] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

events, and knowing that right cannot fail, 
he must commit himself wholly thereto. 
He is likely to be the most opposed person 
in his city. And the most loved. He shows 
in his life how sufficient is the good. To 
keep the faith, he fights a great fight. So 
his soul is one — his whole stake is the 
ennobling of the common life. So he will 
not entangle himself with affairs of the 
world. 

At what definite points the moral power 
of the life we have described will be con- 
sciously applied, and what is the machinery 
that applies it, can be indicated only in 
large and by suggestion. Every man must 
make his own contribution, as his wealth of 
life and the certain needs direct. For an- 
other, one can do no more than point out 
certain fulcrums. 

That he may better lead, the minister 
allies himself with a Church. 

A Church is a partnership of a number 
[166] 



The Leader's Program 

of people loyal to Christ. Its spirit is 
serious, infinitely serious. It is beyond 
recall committed to the glorious issues of 
righteousness. To its characteristic spirit, 
calculating prudence and lukewarmness are 
kinds of profanation. A Church is a com- 
monwealth. Actually a Church is much 
short of this; it is but a candidate for this. 
But a Church itself needing the leadership 
of a great spirit is yet the most responsive 
to his power. 

The task of a Church, as the minister's 
own task, is the enriching of the common 
life. It is to make the great worth of life 
common. It is the training of a social 
conscience that shall bring all indifference 
and hurt into judgment; a conscience that 
shall inspire faith in the resources of life 
and of the world; that shall erect hope in 
the midst of all crying and bitterness, and so 
regenerate the life. It is the function of 
the minister to inspire and shape this con- 
[167] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

science. The power of a Church is the 
power of a fellowship wholly bent upon 
bringing all things into subjection to Christ. 
The minister's leadership is a leadership 
through the Church. Through it is created 
a climate and soil in which virtue may 
strongly grow. Through it is set up a high 
and worthful standard of life. The minister 
quickens and inspires his Church, and the 
Church becomes the controlling fact in the 
community. Its function and its fellowship 
are so enlarged and made effective that it 
is all good impulse and endeavor marshaled; 
it is the point where the religious conscious- 
ness inspired breaks out into expression. 
This result may come about as quietly 
and as naturally as the blade grows, but 
the efficiency of it is this man of God with 
his vision of Christ. He is himself both 
rebuke and invitation. 

This leader moves through the individual 
to society. He labors to save a soul, but 
[168] 



The Leader s Program 

comprehends in his plan society. He is not 
a monk with no relations to the main drift 
of society, but a very leader in that society. 
He is tinged and touched with social and 
political aims. He has for his, something of 
the program as well as the spirit of the 
patriot. He means that every individual 
shall have what belongs to him. The State 
and the family and industry are to him 
things neither common nor unclean. Of 
course he no longer allows his first attention 
to rest upon another world. He knows 
that the great gains of the Gospel are invested 
in the free State, in democratic society; 
that the evolution of society by which all 
men have been admitted to the rivalry of 
existence on the basis of equality is the 
trend given the world by the Gospel. He is 
jealous for the political treasure, which is an 
earned capital of the faith. Failure here 
means that the long march of the centuries 
must be taken over again. Every injustice 
[169] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

or oppression is an attack against the gains 
of the thousands of years. Here is where 
the lay leader is likely to supplant the 
clerical — he comes out of the clouds and 
close to hand in his attack against, and work 
among, men. 

Political enfranchisement, a gain of two 
thousand years, was accomplished by that 
spirit of brotherhood which is the essence 
of the Gospel. It was not gained with- 
out opposition. It is not kept without it. 
It is having its high career in America, 
but there are times when one feels the mood 
in which President Lincoln travailed when 
he interpreted his leadership as effort that 
"government of the people, for the people, 
and by the people 5 ' should not perish from 
the earth. One cannot deny the presence of 
great enemies; there are those who would take 
away the liberties of the people. Democ- 
racy is the chance of the demagogue. The 
people themselves are ignorant and selfish 
[170] 



The Leader's Program 

and need to be led. Here is the minister's 
opportunity. The minister who lets the 
"boss" rule his city without protest and 
challenge, resigns his office and his chance; 
abandons the highway and the market-place 
for the monastery. Yet the cast of thought 
and the emphasis that deny this province 
to the minister is still upon us. 

Nor can one have anything but praise for 
that prophet who, in a time of dispute 
between employer and employed, insisted 
with both that their difference be arbitrated, 
and that he be heard in the council; and 
who, to a gruff inquiry as to what right he 
had to meddle, answered an at-first sneering 
but then deferential lord with such reason- 
ing of righteousness and judgment that 
the gruffian trembled, and in the council 
practically dictated terms to both sides. 

This is quite within the province of the 
moral leader, and really a condition of 
his enthronement, but such influence were 
[171] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

possible in any case, only where there was 
in the leader a great wisdom. But, few 
things could be more important. Nor could 
one speak with authority to labor concerning 
forbearance and patience save he who him- 
self had renounced what labor was too eagerly 
bent upon; nor could he well fail to win with 
grasping greed w T ho had himself become 
poor. The path to power in our industrial 
world is clear and plain to the man who 
can bring the rebuke and the promise of 
Christ. 

The minister who is not training a few 
men of daring for his own enterprise is 
leading neither wisely nor strongly. He 
will impress upon some such the grandeur 
of his task and the glory of the faith, and 
multiply himself through them as centers 
of power. To do this is to impress all with 
the regal character of his office, to the man 
seeking to lead, a first and great gain. The 
decrease in the number of candidates for 
[172] 



The Leader's Program 

the ministry is a terrible judgment upon the 
way ministers themselves value their calling. 
One would hardly go out of his way to raise 
up men to serve after the lukewarm and 
divided fashion of many a minister: but to 
call one to a high generalship in the moral 
conquest of life, might call out one's enthu- 
siasm. One would go the world round to 
find such a man. 

In the work of training a social conscience, 
the minister becomes a preacher. Here is 
the truth concerning God. Here is the 
glory of Christ. Here is the Kingdom of 
the Spirit. Here are the great facts of life. 
Here is the irresistible current of God set- 
ting towards mastery. Let us live trustful, 
hopeful, forth-putting lives, and see the mir- 
acle of grace. Let the wind drive our craft; 
do not fret at the oars. Let us work calmly 
in the certainty that already there has gone 
forth the eternal Will to meet our own good 
endeavors. The vastly superior life is a 
[173] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

fact: — by every power of earnest persua- 
sion and by all the resources of truth, let the 
fact be proved. Declare, explain, illustrate, 
inspire, and break through the people's 
fears. Attack, condemn, disprove the prac- 
tice of life that is material, unjust, de- 
structive, fearful. Create by the logic of 
fact and ideal a moral consciousness that 
shall put to shame every vain and self- 
regarding manner of life. Lay upon the 
industrial and political worlds the measure 
of Christ. Enthrone peace in the midst of 
the world's hurly-burly. Set up the cross 
of the servant. Visions will come, and 
dreams of good and health, and faith springs 
up, — the message from God is of hope and 
love. 

A sermon is a most serious piece of work. 
It comes out of travail where vision is one 
with achievement. The first requisite in a 
sermon is that it deal with truth and life 
first hand and not from hearsay. The essen- 
[174] 



The Leader's Program 

tial thing is certain great convictions. The 
authority must be the preacher's own and 
not that of some book or creed or saint. 
There can be no remove from the springs. 
There is not a single thing in religion so 
remote that it cannot be experienced. As 
other men found things true, so must he who 
speaks for God in our day. A sermon may 
start with St. Paul's confidence, but to 
persuade it soon comes to center in the 
preacher's own. It may well begin with 
God's dealings with Israel, but it lays bare 
the march of the eternal with our own 
people in our time. To speak the ideas and 
the words of other days, is as though one 
spoke in Latin. A language may be no 
more dead than the emphasis of ancient 
creeds. God is of even date — His glory 
is now enacting about us. The minister 
finds religion a thing at first hand. He 
prizes every confidence and glory whose 
story is written, but he finds accumulating 
[175] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

in his own life materials for a Gospel of God 
according to his own name, and for epistles 
that speak with authority on matters of 
even date. His is not a whit behind St. 
Paul's grand privilege. His is accordingly 
a serious calling. Let him be through with 
saying words whose power he has not felt; 
let him be done with problems that are not 
alive in men's hearts. Let him gather his 
forces at today's breach and go forth to 
make conquest of the rich provinces that 
challenge his soul. He must believe some- 
thing good enough and believe it strongly 
enough, to suffer for it. His ardor must 
be inevitable; his devotion must be an 
enthusiasm. 

What the moral leader has to offer is as 
definite and provable as it is good. Chris- 
tian life is a grand program with tremendous 
fruitage of good, and is quite worth a minis- 
ter's wrestle with a man to have him take it 
up. He will go to no man with cant, he 
[176] 



The Leader's Program 

will not talk vaguely; he will go with good 
arguments and with a definite program to 
which to win the friendly. He will remove 
objections and difficulties. And for the 
most part he will find that men are already 
eager to know the facts that are good news. 
He goes with his facts and his challenge to 
the score or more of daring men whose 
interest he may know, and from that day 
when they know his life and his love, and 
begin to think, the ideal of the Life invites 
and constrains them. Some of his most 
telling work he does in this way. It means 
much to the community and to any man him- 
self that he is converted after this fashion. 
So, to accomplish his work, the minister 
becomes a pastor. 

As life is from life, the minister must rely 
upon companionship, to extend furthest 
the atmosphere of his life. Comradeship, 
fellowship, is his program. He lives among 
the boys of his parish as with friends, till 
[177] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

they think with him and feel with him and 
sacrifice with him and catch his spirit. He 
magnifies the pastoral function to a serious 
program touching the influential men in 
particular, and while this is work for careful 
discrimination, it is bound to be rewarded 
by a changed life, even though it bring 
about only after long time an enthusiasm 
for the Church. 

By virtue of this very contact of love the 
home holds the key to the training of children 
in religion. One must look, therefore, with 
greatest apprehension upon the neglect of 
the family altar and the decline of domestic 
religion. To try to build up a school while 
home religion is left to decline is a kind of 
labor of Sisyphus. The moral leader will 
give a day to thanksgiving when he finds a 
real Sunday school teacher, and will labor to 
beget such in the cross, but he will consecrate 
fathers priests in their houses with a fuller 
and more confident hope. His school will 
[178] 



The Leader's Program 

not wane, but it will be an expedient for the 
less fortunate. 

The heart of the Gospel is love, and so its 
essential spirit is missionary. Any relaxing 
here is to throw suspicion on the worth of the 
thing that breeds indifference rather than 
enthusiasm, and so is but second remove 
from letting go from one's self what is not 
held to be good enough to give to others. 

As what is erected in hearts must be erected 
in society and in institutions, the moral 
leader will see that the good gains of con- 
science are laid up in customs and laws. He 
is not a politician, but he cares for the princi- 
ple and the machinery of justice. He is not 
a judge, but he inspires the practice. He 
leads no army, but he inspires men to fight 
for freedom. He sits in no legislature, but 
the lawmakers reckon with him. He is not 
in commerce, but he has much to do with 
business practice. The good gains of right- 
eousness must be laid up in customs and 
[179] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

institutions and standards and laws. The 
vision he sees above becomes solid ground 
beneath his feet. So through His Prince 
God's Kingdom comes, a city descending 
out of heaven to lighten and bless the earth. 
Initiative in action as well as power in 
declaring the principle calling for action, is 
involved in the minister's leadership. To 
work out his truth into character is the task 
of his personal life. To create the social 
conscience and make it become incorporate 
behavior is his other task. The vastness of 
this ministry, the diversity of it, the wisdom 
and foresight required — are all impressive. 
But the leader beyond any question is the 
one who dares to go forward. There is a 
deal of sentiment and principle and will in 
every community that waits for the trumpet 
call and the word of command. Even 
preaching must gather itself around a definite 
task, and be a call to arms. Churches are 
emptied — can one doubt? — because the 
[180] 



The Leader's Program 

message lacks concreteness and is of so gen- 
eral a character. Here are the unshepherded 
within the gates; here are children in the 
slavery of mills; girls in shops and stores 
paid less than enough to live on, and well- 
to-do people rushing to counters in that 
greed for bargains, that makes the sweat- 
shop possible; here are saloons and brothels 
preying upon the life of the city; rotten 
politics — the tyranny in a republic — taking 
away citizen's rights; capital not fraternal 
in spirit but greedy and grasping, and labor 
as hostile; low standards of domestic fidelity 
and responsibility; the poor and shiftless 
and friendless, met or overtaken by the 
Juggernaut of our industrial and social life, 
and no one to plead for the conditions under 
which these people and their children may 
make for themselves souls: these are all 
causes that challenge his leadership. He 
puts beneath them unanswerable and per- 
suading logic; he sets forth the glory of the 
[181] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

service for which he calls for champions; he 
shames men for their indifference to wrong 
and their partnership with wrong, and if men 
are at all slow to move against the hostile 
force, he himself catches up the sword. 

The day a man becomes the champion of 
the righteousness and love of God, from his 
throne forever established, he rules and 
leads. He counts for more in the city than 
any other man; weighs more; by force of 
eternal gravity, is more. It is as if God 
thought, as if God cared, as if God wrought, 
and religion — "the life of God in the soul 
of man" — comes to be a thing redemptive, 
ennobling, compelling. The life of God is 
lived among men, His kingdom is set up 
in the earth, and the will of God that none 
perish is done. 



[182] 



CHAPTER VII 
THE TRAINING FOR LEADERSHIP 

AS moral leadership is the greatest of 
all callings and the most exacting 
of all work, only the foundation of 
the most ample and thorough training can 
support it. Neither this man's own per- 
sonal greatness, nor the wise application of 
his religious power, can come out of any- 
thing but a deeply laid certitude that the 
nature and ground of things are in alliance 
with him. He must know the essential and 
ultimate facts of the universe. This is 
theology. 

There are many theologies. God is a 
living God, and so in the founding of a the- 
ology, to the authority of the Bible, or his- 
tory, is to be added the authority of reason 
[183] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

and of personal experience. God spake, but 
as surely God speaks. The facts of theology 
are as unchanging as God, but science, the 
knowledge of facts, comes dressed in new 
garments with every mental springtide. The 
great facts of religion abide and change not 
— the absolute goodness of God; the atone- 
ment God makes on account of sin and for 
fellowship; the resource and deathlessness 
of the soul; the incarnation of God in human 
life; the Kingdom of the Spirit; the unity 
of human kind; the sovereignty of love — 
these are ultimate facts. They are witnessed 
to by the revelation of God in history, espe- 
cially in the history of Israel and of the 
Christian Church; they are vindicated to 
human understanding, and they are the 
object of the soul's experience. 

The Bible will ever remain the text-book 

of religion; the supremacy of Christ is 

secure. He is the revelation of God, and 

the fulfilment of life. But the Bible is not 

[184] 



The Training for Leadership 

the whole of history, and without doubt 
every religion is offspring of the same brood- 
ing Spirit. The thought -forms must in every 
case be penetrated, that beneath may be 
discerned the essential truth. The training 
of the minister in a day when all varieties of 
religion are in the open and are bidding for 
allegiance, must include comparative re- 
ligion. The great test is upon us. The 
Church is missionary to the world. Christ 
is to make His way to the throne of the 
praise of all peoples by His own weightiness. 
The Church can lead in this only in case the 
abiding facts are with it. 

Theology and philosophy join hands as 
brethren, for all science, it must be remem- 
bered, has attained to majority before the 
world's understanding, and the day is past 
when the minister can make headway with 
theology alone, or if he goes off the great 
highway. All fact and so all science must 
be at one in a universe — there is no con- 
[185] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

tradiction. Sociology and politics and ethics 
and psychology all have their own authority, 
and theology runs almost at once into them, 
and all are strengthened together. The 
minister is poorly equipped either to master 
himself or to persuade others, who does not 
get from these allies their bountiful inspira- 
tion; who on the other hand cannot bring 
to these allies the authority of the Spirit. 

The minister, who in a time of great 
industrial strife, has no command to give, 
and to the people's perplexity has no word 
to speak, simply resigns his throne and his 
Master's. It may be assumed God has a 
will touching industrial relations, but what 
if he who is set to speak for God knows not 
in this time of need what this ongoing uni- 
verse is pledged to? 

Who would lead must know the history 

of the Church, and have fellowship with its 

leaders and saints. At their altars he lights 

his torch. These are they in whom the 

[186] 



The Training for Leadership 

passion of God has concentrated, in whom 
the truth and fellowship of Christ have 
blossomed into enthusiasm, in whom the 
Life has come to power. He lives with them, 
and their faith is begotten in him. The 
heroes of the Faith are his companions and 
friends, and the Christ in them wonder- 
fully charms and constrains him. They are 
incarnation of the worthful things. By 
manifestation in them the truth commends 
itself. 

Who would lead must know contemporary 
life — the spirit of the times. He must see 
its drift, that he may take advantage of 
every current that goes his direction, and 
give right help where men are overstrained 
and overcome. He must know the fallacies 
that prevail over men that he may not beat 
the air; he must know what allies are in 
men's souls. His language and forms of 
thought for the eternal realities must be 
appropriate. Nothing is quite so pathetic 
[187] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

as a man in a pulpit today speaking the 
language of the first century, or the fourth 
century, or the sixteenth, and his people 
looking up expecting to be fed and praying 
for the living bread. In this day a preacher's 
authority must be moral rather than tradi- 
tional. Our age, because of our great con- 
quests, is very self-confident, impatient of 
the past. Things must be vindicated by 
their utility and their right to be. Our age, 
however, is indeed loyal and rewarding to 
the man who grandly dares. 

The current instruction of our Theological 
Schools recognizes these and other important 
facts adequately, and for most part it affords 
splendid training. But many men press into 
the ministry without the training of the 
schools. This is not to measure the great- 
ness of the task. The schools themselves, 
however, are open to criticism at critical 
places. The instruction is addressed to a 
scholar as something to be learned and 
[188] 



The Training for Leadership 

communicated to a congregation, or some- 
thing to be used as a basis for an appeal to 
the will of a congregation, rather than as 
something that is first to touch the will and 
fire the enthusiasm of the man. It is re- 
garded as something to be learned and taught 
rather than as something to be experienced 
and lived. It is something with which to 
persuade others rather than something by 
which the minister himself is to be persuaded. 
It is a system of thought rather than a founda- 
tion in will for a positive achieving life. 
The aim is to make scholars, not leaders; 
the mind is addressed, not the will. The 
result is, men go forth from the Seminary 
without certainty and strength of conviction, 
without passion for truth, having had un- 
touched their sources of power, without the 
first equipment for leadership — weightiness, 
loyalty to Christ, grounds for the Life itself, 
real faith in righteousness. They have 
looked upon these facts as something they 
[189] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

are to teach rather than as something that 
is first to move themselves. 

As a matter of truth, these men are in the 
Seminary not alone to learn about these 
things but to be moved by them. The test 
of whether a man has completed the course 
is not whether he can write on these things, 
but whether he has enthusiasm for doing 
them. By this test some would fail, but 
what would remain would be gold, and after 
all, only numbers, not real power, would be 
lost. The creeds of the Church are vindi- 
cated to the understanding, but no one 
believes them merely because he can state 
them and prove them — he believes them 
when the only justification of their being is 
a fact in him — when his life feels their 
power. 

In teaching the doctrines of religion, the 

connection must be fully emphasized between 

truth and life. The Deity of Christ is not 

a speculative dogma — it grounds the justi- 

[190] 



The Training for Leadership 

fication of our absolute loyalty to Christ. 
Immortality is only a wish or a hope unless 
it moves us to live by a great power, named 
by St. Paul, the power of an endless life. 
Conversion is a fact not so much to be taught 
us as to be first experienced by us. The 
Brotherhood of man is not grasped by us, 
and the truth is as though it were a lie, till 
it makes us love and give. 

The emphasis of the teaching of the Semi- 
nary should be not merely to make scholars 
but also to make saints. Its justification is 
victorious lives. If the facts have not made 
this impression, their logic has not been 
grasped so that it can in turn be imparted. 
What the student has learned matters not — 
is but little better than if he had not learned 
it. It has become no factor in his will and 
life. He may wear it as a garment, but it 
has not blessed his soul. It has added a 
form of equipment, but it has not given real 
power. All teaching is to be brought into 
[191] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

the closest conjunction with that inner and 
immediate knowing God which is the mark 
and power of the Christian. The contrast 
of a teaching heard, and an experience had, 
appears in the life of an Old Testament 
saint — "I have heard of Thee by the hear- 
ing of the ear : but now mine eye seeth Thee. 55 
Our Seminary training is seriously faulty 
in that address is so solely made to the in- 
tellect and scarcely at all to the will. Gulf 
is thus set between what in true life is never 
divided. In an age when men are achieving 
the mastery of vast material forces, and there 
is scarcely a limit set to men's daring and 
enterprise, religion surely must not fail to 
challenge the will. The man being trained 
for leadership must be given things to do, 
and great things, since religion is partnership 
with God's good will. And then that he 
may undertake and do them, he is shown the 
grounds for enthusiasm in truth, — in the 
ideal, in the ultimate things, 
[192] 



The Training for Leadership 

Our Seminary training is faulty, also, be- 
cause it goes on apart from a practical ex- 
perimental field for the planting and proving 
of theory. This grave defect is remedied in 
some schools, and the validity of the principle 
admitted, by the introduction of a depart- 
ment of religious work, making a Church, 
or a group of Churches, the field for the 
Seminary's activity. This is movement in 
the right direction. But the community in 
which this Seminary stands is fully mission- 
ary before the school's gospel and its love. 
The contradiction is that the community 
should not tremendously feel the presence 
of this center of moral power; these leaders 
in religious thought becoming zealous and 
mighty apostles in life; these young men 
being grasped by the truth as well as grasp- 
ing it, and burning with a zeal begotten, 
going forth to make impression upon the 
meagerness, the falseness and the slavery in 
men's lives; the Church in the Seminary 
[193] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

becoming missionary to the crying and bitter- 
ness that surround it, and so often raising 
scarcely a regret or a longing. The contradic- 
tion is, that in this atmosphere there should 
be so little to break the prevailing placidity 
and indifference; that for Christ and God's 
Kingdom there should be no passion. The 
contradiction is that all equipment of doctrine 
and theory of work, and fellowship with the 
saints, should not command the will; that 
blight should fall upon this equipment as 
frost upon trees in bloom. 

The Seminary needs an inspirer, a leader, 
a general of fighting forces. To live in 
touch with him for three or four years would 
be an education of the feelings and of the 
will. The charm of this man is compelling. 
He fires with enthusiasm young men as did 
St. Paul, St. Francis, Loyola; as does Dr. 
Grenfell, Mr. Roosevelt. He is a man of 
boundless faith, with an emphasis upon 
endeavor. Men leaving the Seminary after 
[194] 



The Training for Leadership 

living in his fellowship ask for hard tasks, 
not for profitable places. They go out with 
the martyr spirit. What the patriot is to 
his country, what the general is to his soldiers, 
what the master is to his disciples, this man 
is to these learning obedience. It is not 
enough that the Seminary should make us 
scholars: it should make us heroes, enthu- 
siasts, martyrs. 

This needed efficiency — the Seminary sorely 
suffering by its distance from the practical 
work of the Church — would be best afforded 
by a return to the former apprentice method 
in pastoral training. No one is in a position 
to afford this so properly and effectively as 
the man who is daily face to face with the 
actual work of the redemption of life. Theo- 
retical training, untied by the leash of prac- 
tice, is wild. Theology no more than history 
can be spun out of one's bowels. As history, 
it comes out of action. It has been my ex- 
perience, that getting into the actual work 
[195] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

of the ministry, I had to make anew, or vital, 
for myself, both my theology and my homi- 
letics. 1 

The practical and vital theologian is the 
preacher and pastor. His is a theology that 
is preachable, inspiring, efficient. By con- 
tact with this soldier of the cross the disciple 
is inspired and trained to fight. His edu- 
cation is laid in the will — where it ought 
to be. 

What an advantage, too, would be gained 
by a Church served by a pastor with such a 
group of young men about him! These 
young men work among and lead the young 
people of the parish by the touch and power 
of their lives. They are in and out of the 
homes — angels of inspiration and mercy and 
lightness of heart. They make the parish- 
house the center of the community life, and 
bathe the sentiment of the community in 

1 Compare George A. Gordon, Ultimate Conceptions of 
Faith, p. 82 fol; Washington Gladden, Recollections. 

[196] 



The Training for Leadership 

their own ideals. Their influence is pre- 
dominant by virtue of their weight, and is 
wholly on the side of worthful things. They 
are ministers in citizen's dress: the Church 
and religion are made less official, more prac- 
tical, and nearer to men. They are teachers 
in the Church school; they are companions 
of the young people; they are the skirmish 
line in locating the specially thoughtful and 
needy; and already by their college training 
they are persons of resource and power, and 
might be entrusted with commissions to 
comfort, to enlighten, and to lead to Life. 

As far as the training of these men is con- 
cerned, it is under a master; it is directed to 
an end; it is fitted to life; it is of the feel- 
ings and the will. It opens the springs of 
almighty power hidden in religion. At every 
step it is tested by practice. This training 
is clinical. For instance, the sermon that is 
to be preached on Sunday is by all considered, 
as to what is required, what points should be 
[197] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

made, and the effective way of making them. 
Little chance is here for the bane of preach- 
ing — the detaching ideas from reality. 
Three or four men together can only with 
difficulty get far from fact. Needful objec- 
tivity is thus at hand to tie words and ideas 
back to life. This is the best possible way 
to learn to preach. And the drill in this 
co-operative sermonizing, through four years, 
with, it may be, as many masters, with an 
enthusiasm kindled and a soul to dare, would 
make a new kind of preacher. In like manner, 
the doctrines would be tested by reality and 
by their power to move the soul, and every- 
thing be brought into judgment by its worth 
to renew and glorify the life. 

Conviction and enthusiasm, the substance 
of all conquering and redeeming faith, to 
which this book presumes to show the way, 
are based both as deep as God's being and as 
deep as man's being — all being. They are 
[198] 



The Training for Leadership 

the natural flower of all real religion. Thus 
based two-fold, apparently the dangers of 
faith are two. First — that faith will be 
only such thing as comes out of external 
authority, and not that mighty certainty 
which is based in man's being and experi- 
ence : be merely some past, some book, some 
creed, a custom or tradition, formal and 
sterile; be concerned with proprieties but be 
without passion. The other danger is, that 
faith will be merely internal, and be not laid 
in God's being, and be mere caprice, opinion, 
or fancy; baseless in fact, barren of cer- 
tainty. But religion is first of all great facts 
or realities, unmade by man, surer than the 
earth, mightiest current and tide, to be fully 
trusted — God, and God's goodness — im- 
mediately knowable by man to immovable 
certainty, in the witness the believer has in 
himself. 

Brethren, it is ours, by all that first-hand 
freshness of faith that at some few times has 
[199] 



Moral Leadership and the Ministry 

brought God near the world to redeem and 
save it, — it is ours to lead the world through 
the might of God into all that glory of life 
which has crowned victors and overcomers, 
who by this very faithfulness have entered 
into the joy of the Lord. There has always 
been the same great human need as at pres- 
ent, but there has never been anything like 
the present great desire. It is the meaning 
of that restless search and toil which mark 
this time, but which in very doubt of itself 
seems only doubling effort in despair of his 
coming who shall lead the way. No one can 
exaggerate the hope of Christ that His 
apostles will now with even greater than the 
old-time ardor reveal Him, nor imagine the 
joy to crown those who, like the Master, by 
enduring the cross, become men's saviors. 



[200] 



MAK 16 1912 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
III 



017 075 372 






